A M Exclusive Blog

Our business suffered a significant decline due to COVID-19 since the majority of our revenues right now come from people printing and copying in the office. We were very fortunate that, between planned retirements and leveraging government programs and grants, we have been able to keep our entire team together. I came across this proverb about a year ago, and it has been our mantra throughout this trying time: when fishermen cannot go to sea, they mend nets. One of the “nets” we have been mending has been improving our internal company communications using Microsoft Teams. Before the pandemic, we rarely had meetings amongst each other and often worked on our own tiny “islands.” This shifted last summer when we created a Team for each of our main groups (Service, Administration, and Sales & Marketing). Below are a few of the practices we implemented:

A few years back, I was at a business networking event, discussing what was going on in my business at the time, and I will never forget the words of advice given to me: “You need to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Part of my personality drives me towards trying to reach perfection. It was not until I accepted perfection as untenable that I stumbled upon greater understandings of how to maintain being at ease. I am thankful for hearing this advice years in advance of 2020. It gave me some time to practice before facing the challenges that the year brought (and continues to bring into 2021).