I love Thanksgiving. In my family, it’s our jam. A holiday steeped in tradition. Easy traditions that bring us together with family and friends with the sole focus of enjoying each other over meals, drinks, turkey trots, football games, card games, and board games. Every quirky, obscure, flawed, impressive, funny, dynamic, and unconventional part of us is on full display and we celebrate that. No judgment, no holding back! And we are grateful for all of it. And for good health, for meaningful work, and so very many other blessings.
Yet, there’s also always a different type of gratitude, one that isn’t always immediately obvious. Gratitude for the experiences that challenge us, push our boundaries and make us grow in ways we weren’t quite ready for.
Each year, I have the honor, and Butler Street tradition, of bringing that forward. This year, I’ll reflect on the gift of a slowed economy and why leaders and their teams should be grateful for having experienced these challenging times.
It’s in these challenging times that we often uncover our greatest opportunities for growth and innovation. Here are several areas that show where this slowed economy has actually been a blessing for us and many of our clients:
We are grateful for the budget cuts, for that led to Resource Optimization. The slowed economy helped us work smarter, not harder. We looked at tasks, processes, technology, and outcomes and as a result, are more productive, more communicative and more focused as a team. When resources are limited, efficiency becomes key. Our team has also helped many companies streamline their operations, maximizing output with minimal input, demonstrating how constraint can drive efficiency.
We are grateful for the clients and prospects who stalled out in our pipeline for it Forced Innovation: They worried about spending when their revenues were down. But rather than wait it out, it forced us to create new offerings and workshops to help them grow. If you’ve paid attention to Butler Street this year, you’ll see we took the time and the reins on understanding how best to utilize AI, particularly ChatGPT in sales, recruiting, and leadership environments and built programs to help our clients quickly adapt to this new way of thinking and working.
We are grateful for the rapid expansion of AI without an instruction manual for it pushed us toward Strategic Rethinking: Like many of our clients, we had to challenge our approach to work, the profile of the people we needed to hire to accomplish our goals and the offerings our clients needed to get through these difficult times. We helped many staffing organizations shift their focus from order fulfillment to strategic client acquisition and were able to provide the tools and training to get them there.
We are grateful for the opportunity to give free consulting to our clients during these tough times for it resulted in Deepened Relationships:100% of our revenue comes from our current clients. Our team loves our clients, we are invested in their success and as a result, want to do everything we can to help our clients grow. Due to the slowed economy, we had extra time to invest in consulting with our clients, and many of those hours of consulting, speaking, and webinars were unbilled. That said, our relationships are stronger than ever, and our clients are experiencing successes as a result. For that, we are so grateful.
We are grateful for yet another twist and turn in the economy for it continues the path of Personal Development. The fun thing is to ride the wave. Many were able to do this during the Covid build-back. The easy thing would have been to keep doing what we’ve always done. Perhaps making some adjustments like increasing the activities and finding more clients willing to engage. That’s not us. No, we learned. We pushed ourselves to learn ChatGPT, DallE, Bard, and other AI tools that support the industry. We recreated our eLearning, we practiced new messaging, we changed. And we grew. And that is what it is always all about. Growing.
There’s an old saying,
“What doesn’t break us, makes us stronger.”
I am grateful that 2023 and this tough economy didn't break us. Instead, it fortified our resolve, sharpened our skills, and expanded our horizons. It’s in these moments of trial that we discover our true potential and the depth of our resourcefulness.
So, as we give thanks for the year that has been, let's also look forward with optimism and determination. We believe the path ahead is full of potential, Contact us to learn how we can help you harness it.