You could not make it up....
No matter how bad you think things are in a business, there is always hope. Just difficult decisions to make and hard work to put things right.
I thought I would share some of the bizarre and ridiculous business that I have experienced over the years.
There was a business owner who questioned keeping an erroneous payment of £50k from HMRC. This sizeable payment appeared in a business bank account without paper work. The bank reconciliation reference was barely recognisable. The bank eventually tracked down the payee and after some sleuthing we contacted the correct Government department to repay the monies. It was a COVID loan that we had not applied for, paid to the wrong bank account. For some unknown reason, one of the owners questioned why we were paying it back.
There was a business owner who misunderstood a marketing budget 12 fold and confused £100k with £1.2 million. To this day, I cannot understand how this came about.
There was a business owner who confused the buyer breakdown of a secondary market and misunderstood who their customers were. Again, how do you do this?
Then there was the Northern council manager after reading 'Keep It Simple Stupid' considered scribes over an IT system…. maybe Birmingham City Council should consider it instead of their Oracle system?
Then there was the Midlands council employee who had a contract from 1960s, who refused to amend his terms and conditions of employment. He was awarded a bonus for the amount of labour he could get onto any job. He was compensated for overstaffing each job. This was a reaction to labour shortages in the 1960s. Supported by his trade union. There was not a consideration made for local council tax payers.
This one is unbelievable, but true. There was the Company Director who attempted to play an adult DVD of Cheynne the Wonder Princess after the installation of a new IT system. He had installed it on the server’s DVD drive and corrupted the new IT system. Everyone was locked out of the IT system.
Then the company owners who had no idea of their industry. One believed that an established competitor had come out of ‘nowhere’, when they are one of the most well-known businesses in the UK having been established in 1884. They are consistently in the top 3 of annual turnover for provincial companies in their market sector. The other brother did not understand where income was generated. He misunderstood charges to the buyer which contributed over 50% of the business’s total income.
How about the overseas Municipality who believed they could train illiterate goat herders to operate a remote project management system. The challenge was exacerbated by the fact that the project management system was in English, whereas he spoke broken Arabic.
Then there was the very clever hack. Nigerian hackers took over the budget holders email service. They mimicked his emails to the payment processor, who for some reason almost paid a £30k request for payment without a corresponding invoice. This was only caught through a double check via the phone.
And finally for now, the contractor who threatened the business consultant for losing his relationship with a business. How stupid can you be? Instead of being professional, asking why this was happening, if anything could be re-considered and whether a staged withdrawal was possible. The Forest Gump school of business.
Businesses employ people and deal with money. You are obviously going to come across shenanigans. The trick is to understand how your business ticks and whether it operating for the benefit of the business or the agendas of others.
Business change does not have to be painful. It is all about hearts and minds. Some employees, contractors and clients do have their own private agenda. Just ask the basic question; 'How does this benefit the business?'.
