“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” so goes the saying. My business trip to the UK was cancelled today (and for the unforeseeable future) due to Iceland’s volcanic ash drifting to lands far and wide. If I made a list of 100 different scenarios for such a business trip to be cancelled, I seriously doubt that Icelandic volcano chud would have made the list—or even entered my mind, for that matter. Storms, terrorism, mechanical failure, aliens, troublesome geese…those types of situations would have been on the list, but a volcano in Iceland? No way!
Disappointed in not being able to make the trip? Sure, but it’s completely out of my control, so there’s no need to harp on it. What is within my control is what I do with this upcoming week. For the first time in my work life, I have a calendar without any scheduled meetings and calls. This horribly rare opportunity provides challenges:
1) To not get too immersed in the day-to-day business, which I had planned to be away from anyway.
2) Use the time to bring new dynamic opportunities, partnerships, strategic developments, etc., to life without the normal shackles of the typical daily demands.
While it’s unfortunate that the trip, which is always very worthwhile, won’t occur…it’s also exciting to think about what I can try to make happen with holes in the calendar.
As an accountant, you have dealt with the “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade” predicament numerous times. Please feel free to post here what you did to maximize opportunity (with clients, the IRS, in your firm, etc.) when circumstances were unfavorable.
Rob Nance
Publisher
AccountingWEB, Inc.
- 1251 reads
Golden opportunity!
Nice blog Rob! Sorry to hear you can't make it over to visit team AWEB UK but I hope you enjoy being able to cross all those things off your to do list. I was trying to think of a good pun about volcanos and ash but it's too early in the week for me to access the comedy part of my brain properly right now. Perhaps I'll be able to work something up about a 'piece of ash' or sorting out your 'ash flow' later on! :-)
Ash Clouds
troublesome geese, Rob your comedy knows no bounds!! Yes the UK is under a shrowd of Silcon, Carbon & Sulphur Dioxide at the moment (or that's what the government will have us believe). This is costing some of the airlines up to £120million a day in losses and people are stranded all over the world, as most if not all of Western European airports are closed. Bit of a shocker, I'm just gutted I'm not one of those lucky holiday makers stranded in Greece for another week due to the ash cloud. Besides, I'm not sure what Iceland are up to, I'm convinced we just said "Send Cash"...