I just finished a four month consulting gig with a small firm (15 employees about $1M in revenue) who asked me to help them grow and grow aggressively. So like every engagement I started out assessing what they have, how they do business and what were there assets that could be leveraged for aggressive growth. Oh yeah, they were a software development company. Here is what I found:

- They didn't have any type of plan.
- They didn't have specific goals or objectives.
- They no had project management system (critical in software development)
- They were going to have a negative cash flow of $60K for the first 2 months of the year, and they didn't know it.
- They did not leverage their client base for new business.
- They were averaging about 60% turnover annually.
- They had no defined target market. (They chased whatever moved)

I could go on but that is enough...

When I came back to them with some suggested changes I thought they should make in basic systems and processes all I received was defensiveness. Of course it is normal to defend the status quo, it is part of the change process.

Ultimately I ended up stopping the engagement because of what I call 'horse to water' reasons. I could justify a change, build the perfect case and rationale but I was not going to get the change executed with the owners. They had survived for years doing it the way it was and simply would not change.

I guess my point is we all need to be aware of our own barriers to change both in business and our personal lives, but we don't need to have a 'near death' experience to lower those barriers.

How open are you to change?

This is my first post since joining bizinformer, be gentle with me.