What do you do when you have an emergency in your business? How do your people react? Will they pull together or fall apart? Will they support the business or do they care more about themselves? These questions were all answered at ProVision this year in a most positive manner.
At 5:00p.m. on February 1st of this year, my partner who was running our Irvine office and all of the employees of that office decided to leave the firm. We were caught totally unawares by this action. Of course, we had to move quickly. We needed to assure our clients that we could take care of them from our Arizona office.
Since most of our clients are not local, taking care of the Irvine clients from Arizona did not really present a difficult challenge. What did present a challenge was introducing the clients to their new CPA and tax coach and reassuring them that nothing would be lost in the transition. To complicate matters, we were in the middle of tax season, our busiest time of the year.
I was curious as to how our professionals and staff would react when I informed them of the previous evening's activity in Irvine. We would be asking them to call our clients and to take on additional responsibility in the middle of busy season.
To my great delight, they responded with enthusiasm to take on this challenge. They were totally willing to work the extra hours and give the extra effort to make sure our Irvine clients were well taken care of. This really shouldn't have surprised me at all. We have a terrific staff and they care so much about our clients. Still, as a business owner and creator of ProVision, I was moved by their care for the business and for our clients.
My Arizona partners and I decided we needed to do something for our employees to reward them for their efforts. We told them we would set aside the profits from the Irvine clients for the following few months and use it for a team activity. Then, we let them choose the activity. There was enough money to take everyone on a cruise, including some spending money for them. Last weekend, we took the cruise. Look for my blog tomorrow to learn about the cruise and its impact on our team.
Warmest regards,
Tom