Steady As She Goes

Hi All,

 

There have been many posts about CCP’s necessary decision to take a step back from the WOD initiative and to preprioritize on core business. I’ll get to some thoughts on that in a minute. Really wanted to tell you about something which I had to do as part of a downturn in my business this year first though.

We have a major contract which supports a number of staff ,and we were lucky enough to gain a couple of sites when we retendered and won at the beginning of the year. Almost to the day of changeover, the devastating Christchurch earthquake hit and my staff who had only just elected to come over to work for me, went above and beyond to assist not only me, but the company we look after.

Less than three months after that, I was given an indication that the site would no longer be looked after by me on a Friday. By Monday it was confirmed. Along with the other changes at that time, I lost the equivalent of three and a half people and was given 12 days to implement the change. Then they wanted to do it in 6. I told them to #$% off on the 6, but basically had to comply.

Given what my staff had done and what they’d lived through, there was no way I would be breaking the news over the phone, so flew to Christchurch for a face to face meeting. I’ve been in a position where I’ve had to let people go before, in some cases needing to fire someone because of either performance issues (you can read that as rank stupidity if you want), but this, this was a kick in the guts for them and for me. Easily the worst thing I’ve had to do during my time running this company.

So, to CCP. They will be hurting, both management and staff, there are no two ways about it. While to a large extent this was a gambit, the development of more than one revenue stream makes a lot of sense. The forecasting and implementation seems to be where the issues have been, especially as the development cycles impacted their core business so badly (I’ll admit to a wodge load of supposition and assumption as I’m really only a distant observer).

What can we do? Sure we could possibly be all eveangelical about things and shout it from the rooftops, but I suspect that the subscriber numbers shows that we’ve already done that and pulled in friends and family. At the heart of it, CCP needs to get out there and advertise. They need to open up the new markets and get them cranking. It really is up to them.

And us? Stay steadfast. Keep the accounts we do have, perhaps encourage people we know to resubscribe and to give CCP a solid ongoing base from which they can refocus, reprioritise, and launch anew.

 

FS

 

H