Challenge
- Author:
- John Hays
- Business:
- Hays Travel Ltd
- Published:
- 10/11/2008 11:14:00
If you get into a situation where you’ve got some bad sales figures coming in, it’s important to be objective. After 9/11 our sales were unbelievably horrendous. We had some difficult decisions to make at that time like, do we keep staff on full time or do we start laying them off?
You know why your sales figures are bad though because everyone’s sales figures are bad. It’s a question of survival in a situation like that. But on a personal level there’s some very tough decisions to be made.
When the sales figures are bad and it isn’t an external factor, when it’s our fault and we’ve got something wrong, it’s important to be honest and analytical. We have to ask ourselves what is it that we got wrong, not to blame other people in the process, and work to change things around. I don’t think anyone ever has a smooth path to success, there’ll be tough decisions to make along the way, but as long as you’re objective enough to be able to sit down and ask why something went wrong, that’s the way to move on and develop the business after learning from your mistakes.