Adjusting Your Sails

We have all heard and seen the image of “Keep Calm and Carry On” but how do you actually put this into practice when things really do go wrong, particularly when matters are outside of your control?

Here at Tomorrow the World we can truly say we have experienced this first hand. The downside of running international events is, a lot of the time, we are at the mercy of the show organisers. If they decide to move the dates, change venue or, worse still, cancel the event, there isn’t a lot we can do about it.

Don’t get us wrong, we have very close working relationships with the show organisers of the events we are involved in, allowing us to keep one step ahead of any impending changes but, as last month proved, sometimes even we are blindsided! We were organising a UK Pavilion for a trade show in Istanbul. With a number of businesses signed up to exhibit and flights and hotels booked, suddenly, out of nowhere, with only 8 weeks to go, the show organiser “postponed the show to 2017”.

As you can imagine we were left feeling very disappointed. Not only had we let our clients down but our team were also left feeling very demotivated after working so hard on the project and getting people excited about the show. We pulled out all the stops to offer a programme of business networking to the delegates should they wish to take advantage of their current bookings but the momentum was lost.

We aren’t ashamed to admit that this knock took us some time to get over. You may have noticed we haven’t been our usual, noisy selves. Could Team Tomorrow The World just be normal human beings after all?

We love analogies so when, at a recent networking event, we learned that planes rarely take off in the direction of their destination unless by chance, our little ears perked up! Visibility, pesky wind, runway length, flocks of birds and noise restrictions all have to be factored in.

Heartened by this news we took some time to review our focus, as well as our insurance! And just like those song lyrics, we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and are now raring to go for the spring 2016 shows.

We’ll leave you with a final quote on pesky winds from the American writer William Arthur Ward.

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails”.

We look forward to working with you in the future come wind, rain or shine!