When All of Your Eggs are in One Basket

I had just hired another employee for the project(s) that we were working on. My name and company were being passed from one operating group to another. I was cranking out proposals as quick as I could. Terms were not an issue. In the back of my head, I knew that this ride would end at some point and I desperately needed to diversify and find more clients. The only problem? I was too busy managing my teams and doing the work. How was I to scale? Let’s just enjoy this ride. Maybe, it won’t end? They love me.

The downward spiral was gradual. First one manager left, then another and then another. Eventually they were all replaced with managers that I had no previous relationship with and who didn't know my work from Adam. They inherited my work, my strategy, my performance, which was all stellar by the way. It didn't matter.

One by one, the work and the projects were pulled. They either dried up or they were internalized. As this happened, I slowly started cutting back the team. Eventually, leadership changed. This meant that a whole new direction could be coming my way. It could be good or it could be bad. It was bad.

On a rare day off for me, I was sitting in Starbucks when I got a call from a number I did not recognize. It was “the company” and they were informing that my project end date would be at the end of the month. I was stunned but yet not surprised. I knew it was coming and yet I still did nothing about it. Do I blame myself? Yea, I do a little bit, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t performance related it was something else. Something completely out of my hands.

A week later I informed everyone of what happened. The end was nigh.

Recently I read a LinkedIn post from Augie Ray, an analyst at Gartner, and he mentioned the following:

Digital didn’t save your company. Social didn’t save your brand. AI is not going to save your Customer Experience. Stop looking for magic bullets. Start the hard work of understanding your customers better & committing to driving their satisfaction, loyalty & advocacy.

I feel like maybe if I could have done a better job of managing the existing relationships, and had taken more time in understanding their challenges, that maybe I could have at least prolonged or extended the work. I’ll never know.

I do know this, there is 100% truth in the notion that putting all your eggs in one basket is not a good thing. :) Lesson learned.