Hey, good to see you again. Sit back, kick your shoes off and enjoy the story.

It was Friday and I only had one more client to see before I could officially call it weekend. I’m using the word ‘officially’ here, because my last appointment was the kind of appointment that feels more like ‘leisure’ than ‘work’, although honestly, pretty much all of my work falls into this category. But anyway, this was going to be especially fun because I was meeting my client out at his farm; at what he considered to be his weekend retreat from an otherwise busy business life. To add to the pleasure of spending the afternoon working in the lovely offices he had built above the old barn, he had recently purchased a new horse and I was looking forward to seeing him.
Besides, I had been promised lunch and a pitcher of his famous iced mint tea, and I have learned never to turn down the offer of lunch, mint tea and new horses.

The afternoon was beautiful. The late summer sun had bronzed the fields to the left and right of the road to various shades of gold, brown and orange, leaving the landscape looking like a giant patchwork quilt, which had been carefully spread over the rolling hills of the Carinthian back-ways. I intentionally drove with the windows down, letting the smells of the ripened fields fill the car and catch in my clothes and hair. I knew that I would find the familiar smell of sun and earth on my pillowcase when I woke the next morning, and I was looking forward to that.

I thought of my client, Hannes, who had been wrestling with many issues over the past year. He was the managing director of a good sized company which had consistently enjoyed excellent sales and a reliable customer base, up to last year. Since then, their revenues had been imperceptibly decreasing and their customer base gradually dwindling. He had been considering some significant changes geared towards increasing sales and decreasing costs, but he hadn’t implemented any of them yet. He still wasn’t quite sure about it. The changes would mean initiating new processes and beginning new learning cycles and he was afraid that this would slow them down and make them less productive during these uncertain times. To add to his indecision, his revenues for the first two quarters hadn’t been as bad as expected and so he seemed to be poised at the edge of change, not quite ready to kick it into motion.

I rounded the last corner in a cloud of brown dust and pulled up under the branches of the old linden tree which had probably been the sentinel of the property for the past 200 years or so. It was huge, and although I knew from experience that it was home to countless birds who would invariably leave their calling cards on the roof of my car, I also knew that its shade would prevent the afternoon sun from turning it into an oven. So I parked, changed my shoes, grabbed my briefcase and my laptop and went out in search of Hannes, leaving my car at the mercy of those malicious birds and their prolific digestive systems.

I began looking in the office, where Hannes wasn’t to be found. I deposited my briefcase and laptop there anyway, feeling immediately lighter, and continued my search. I passed the paddock where a few of his brood mares stood grazing and headed towards the back barn, figuring he might be there with the new horse. Just as I was walking into the barn, I heard a bit of a scuffle, a short muffled yell and then a dull, hard ‘thwap’.

‘Uh oh’, I thought to myself, ‘that sounded painful.’

I ran towards where the thwap had come from and found a lovely chestnut I had never seen tied in the small grooming stall and Hannes, nursing his left thigh and cursing quietly under his breath. We forewent our usual greetings and I helped him limp over to a chair to sit down. ‘How did that happen?’, I asked. Hannes was no beginner with horses.

‘That grooming area is simply too tight, I’ve known this for years’, he said. ‘The horse got nervous and I was stuck in the corner. He had me in a second. I had no way out.’ He shook his head, ‘I’ve been planning a new grooming area forever and just haven’t been certain when to do it. But now I see that I’ve got to do it this weekend. I don’t want to risk a serious injury.’
He stood, squared his shoulders and smiled. ‘Let’s discuss the plans over lunch’. And after bringing the new gelding back to his paddock, we walked slowly, and painfully, back to the house, where lunch was waiting.

I looked over at Hannes and watched him limp. Yep, it was the pain of the kick that made the difference here. In contrast to the changes needed for his company, the changes needed for his grooming area would, I was quite certain, be implemented that weekend. Pain is, as we all know, a great motivator. The greater the pain, the greater the motivation

But do we have to wait until it hurts for us to change?

It’s far easier to put any kind of change or adjustment into practice if we start before we have a game leg, a negative balance sheet or ruined relationships. And modifications in any system or process, whether we’re working with horses, businesses or people are time consuming and cumbersome in the beginning. But don’t forget, indecision and reluctance to change could well put your company, and your legs, in a tight spot.

Happy changing,
Lisa

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