Case Study 2 :
Background: Sue was imminently qualified, experienced, and very good at what she did. She was an ‘in demand’ professional and owned her own one-person practice. She employed a remote receptionist who managed her phone and diary. Sue was also married and had two young children, a girl and a boy. She was becoming extremely busy and was finding it difficult to complete her work and found that she was working late, taking work home and thought that she was ignoring her family. She employed one more person who started seeing clients for non-urgent matters. The practice grew and very soon there were four ‘client facing’ professionals in her practice, and in another year two more, and you guessed it reception, admin, bookkeeper, and another support staff were employed. They moved to larger premises. Her business was growing and now she had to deal with staff rostering and scheduling with people asking for days off and some wanted to work only part time and one went on maternity leave.
Situation: The one-woman practice was now a ‘small corporate’ of sorts with around twenty people working directly in the business.
This was an example of growing fast, maybe too fast… Sue was now not only a practitioner but found herself having to deal with management issues – she had become a CEO with all the responsibilities and no extra perks. She was getting home after seven, sometimes nine. The family unit situation was rather delicate and under pressure.
We will not go into the solution … The business situations we deal with sometimes directly affect the personal life and well-being of the founder or senior leaders.
Sue and her husband and children are all doing fine. Her openness to holding one to one, team, as well as family meetings was refreshing as not many CEOs see themselves as needing help. Every casual and structured meeting helped towards devising and implementing the required changes.
[ Identifying details changed or not disclosed, per Sue’s (not her real name) request. ]
Do parts of this story resonate with you ?
Sometimes you need someone who is a specialist but not related to you personally or your work to listen, and help you reflect and review in a focused way, but also support you to stray ‘outside the box’. –PMreview
