THE ELVES ARE REVOLTING

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… or is it? Orders to fill; budgets to cost; not to mention the office party hangover. But if you think you’ve got it bad this Christmas, just imagine how Santa Claus is feeling right now.

Once a small business owner based out of an anonymous workshop in the Northern Hemisphere, Father Christmas has overseen an unprecedented global expansion in the last 300 years or so and, with it, all the challenges you’d expect of any large multinational business.

Customers were complaining about wrong presents, the Elves were muttering discontentedly and relationships with key distribution partners were strained.

Luckily, Chief Distribution Director Rudolph R. Rednose has a nose for sniffing out solutions to complex problems. With so much to cover, Rednose wanted to shine a light on fixing the few things that would make the biggest difference. Having previously done some work with us on how to get his team to pull together, he asked us to come in and do some key relationship research and action facilitation.

As it turns out, the Elves had other employment opportunities and a mass departure was inevitable if their workload concerns weren’t addressed. The distribution partner had always been encouraged to deliver at speed, but now agreed to leave parcels with a neighbour to save any depot collection heartache. As for the customers? They simply wanted a return to a familiar ordering system without the rigmarole of Naughty Or Nice captcha.

Now, Santa is exceeding his customers’ expectations; his fulfilment centre of choice now accurately tracking their deliveries; the Elves are more productive than ever; and Christmas is no longer cancelled. Don’t thank us — thank the big beardy fella for recognising that his toy manufacturing empire needed a little bit of outside help to get back on track.

If we can sort that grotto’s mess out, we can help you tackle just about anything your business throws at you next year and beyond.

The events and characters depicted in this story are entirely fictitious (but don’t tell the children). Any similarity to actual persons, elfkind or livestock is purely coincidental.

Seasonal Greetings to you all from Rowan, Cathy, Bill and everyone in the Promising Outcomes team

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