One of the features of life in general is that things happen, quite often in a particular sequence and usually within a specific time frame. In this instance there’s a school play next week and a major sales opportunity at the St Nick‘s market that Young Enterprise SW put on for the companies.
Except stylECO don’t have a plan.
Both myself and the teacher to this year’s company had to crack the whip and ‘strongly encourage’ the girls to figure out exactly when they were going to order raw materials, how long they would take to arrive and how long they would spend making products. It looks like they are going to miss the school play with their own product range so will fall back on buy-low-sell-high strategy but still need to buy something to sell anything…
At least the accounts are now on the Young Enterprise spreadsheet.
It also seems that the enthusiasm within the Board meetings isn’t carrying over into the rest of the week. I know that school life is very busy these days, but running a company isn’t a 1hr once a week activity. No one’s expecting 100hr weeks from them on Young Enterprise. They’ll each find their balance but at the moment an undue amount of pressure is being placed on one of the Managing Directors and she’s not quite strong enough to shoulder the leadership role (hence the intervention and support).
As a first action they’re raising the profile of the reward & retribution developed by the HR Directors so that everyone is fully aware of their expected performance levels. Agenda, minutes and action plans are beginning to make a formal appearance and a step-by-step guide to Google Groups has been handed out. The crunch will come over the next four weeks when they have the build up to the Christmas Trade Fair, the School play and several swimming galas to contend with.