How the Swine Flu United My Company
Luis F. Gonzalez-Aspuru
It was April 2009. My business was
ramping up, employee morale was high and
things couldn’t get any better— and then
life happened.
In my training business, much of our
work involves face-to-face meetings. On
one occasion, we were preparing for an
important session with one of our best
clients. I remember thinking at the time
how lucky and grateful I was to have such
a thriving business during tumultuous
economic times.
Before things got underway, my phone rang.
It was my wife. She called to tell me about
a “swine flu” that was affecting people in
our country. While I tried to stay calm, I was
unsure how this news would directly affect
my business. My fear was that our clients
would cancel or postpone our training
sessions because of the outbreak. I was
about to tell my staff the news when my
client’s human resources director ran up
to me.
“Luis, I have bad news. The training is
cancelled, and we don’t know when we are
resuming operations, so don’t ask,” she
said. “I’m sorry, but please pick up your
stuff. We will call you later.”
And then she left, taking all of her 100
employees with her. What was supposed to
be a huge training had just been put on the
backburner. We were stunned, to say the
least. I thought about the nine other client
sessions we had scheduled for the coming
weeks. What would happen to them? What
would happen to my business?
I was worried, and I wasn’t sure I could
handle such a hit. And then I thought about
what one of my mentors taught me long
ago: When emotion goes up, intelligence
goes down. I immediately walked out of the
conference room, sat down and started
figuring out what to do.
It was then that I realized people were
waiting for my instructions. I had to be a
leader. I had to make hard decisions in a
time of emergency. People counted on me.
I walked back to the room and did what
entrepreneurs do best: I led. I sent my
staff home and told them to meet me at
a specific restaurant at a later time, no
exceptions.
When I arrived at the restaurant, the
atmosphere was bleak. Everybody
was speculating about the flu and the
implications it could potentially have on the
business. If the government ruled against
mass meetings due to the possible spread
of swine flu, we would be out of business.
I looked my employees in the eyes and
spoke from the heart. I told them that we
weren’t leaving the restaurant until three
things happened. First, we had to change
our mood and keep the energy up.
Second,
we had to brainstorm ideas on how to
continue to train our clients. Finally, we had
to come up with other business products
and services that did not require the
gathering of people.
Within minutes, everybody was writing
and yelling enthusiastically. A flipchart
appeared out of nowhere, coffee never
stopped pouring and we were back in
business. By uniting as a team in a time of
uncertainty, we were able to leverage one
another’s experiences and come up with
three basic actions that would help us stay
afloat. They included:
-
Immediately communicate our
contingency plan to all of our clients;
they needed to be kept in the loop
when it came to our services
-
Create an “objection handling”
process for the specific crisis;
we needed to know what we
were up against and how to
best address the issue
-
Conceptualize and create a new
online marketing product for training
within the next three weeks
In the end, everything worked out for the
best. Fear over the swine flu dissipated,
we were able to reschedule the trainings
and we even created a new product that
was never on our radar screens. More
importantly, we learned that together we
can overcome anything.