I was talking to someone yesterday whom I have been helping on and off over the last couple of years. A fellow Enterprise Agency they were in some trouble having become reliant on a single Business Link contract for their income. A strategic change of direction was needed as their income line was at risk. In short they have embraced change, are looking at aquiring significant assets and their future looks much more secure now.
In talking I discussed with their CEO what drives them on. The reality is that a redundancy option was financially attractive but that their belief, passion and drive meant that they were willing to fight for what was obviously the morally correct outcome. This industry throws up many such people whose driving ambition is not personal fortune but a belief in helping others and doing the "right thing". In the public sector and much of the private sector this attitude is alien to many who cannot understand why someone would fight when an easier option is available.
As long as there are people like this CEO around then there will always be businesses such as ours and indeed in the teeth of what is going to be a really tough and prolonged recession perhaps we are about to see the rise of a new way of doing business - with sound business principles but where success is not measured on the crude bottom line but in what difference it makes to society, how it treats customers and staff and where there is a willingness to take the correct decisions not purely the most profitable.
I would hazzard that life and society would be much richer.
