The July Holiday Weekend in both Canada and the U.S. mixes patriotism with summer. This year’s Canadian holiday (July 1) occurred on a Thursday, creating a U.S.-Thanksgiving-stye weekend, with an orphaned regular “business day” on Friday. (When one of my employees asked if he could use a paid vacation day on Fri
day, I not surprisingly said “absolutely Yes” because the amount of real work that can be done on a day like this is close to nil.) The U.S. July 4 holiday, as its Canadian counterpart, occurred as I travelled to and from a cousin’s cottage in Muskoka north of Toronto. Without Internet access (or time), I “maintained” the blog with a set of hasty postings written in 20 minutes on June 30 as we prepared to leave on the journey.
While not much business occurs this time of year, one of my biggest business mistakes happened this weekend five years ago, when, as things were failing in a key aspect of my business, I allowed myself to enjoy a business-as-usual vacation. Probably there is nothing wrong with the vacation — but I had to rub it in the face of the employee I would soon dismiss. Maybe the problems were more optical than substantial but I failed to respect either the employee or the emotions my actions would rightfully cause.
Little things certainly count at big times, for example. Superficial issues become truly serious when we are at crisis points and our adrenalin, stirred by the fight for survival, is at its peak. We need to respect these qualities when we are about to drop emotional bombshells on anyone.
As I noted earlier, we need to listen to our emotions and control them, while respecting how our marketing initiatives and business practices affect and influence the emotions of our current and potential clients. Matt Handal points these basics out clearly in his powerful posting: “What you don’t know about marketing.”
I still have much to learn.
