To “take care of the problems”, no matter what…
I’ve always felt that the real measure of a company (or a person for that matter) is not how they act when everything is going well – anybody can look good when things are great, but how they handle things when they go wrong. This is where to look to find what a company is really made of.

We’ve had some firsthand lessons in this and I know how difficult it can sometimes be to “do the right thing”, especially when it’s my money on the table! But I always try to keep in mind that I’m in this for the long haul, and if I’m not careful, our short term gain may very well turn into our long term loss.

Not that there haven’t been times that I’ve been very tempted to walk away from a customer’s problem, maybe something that I could easily argue was not our responsibility. There have been issues we’ve shouldered that really weren’t ours and the payback was not immediately there – no big conservatory job waiting because we did the “right” thing.

But I think that overall, the commitment to this course of action, has its effect on Tanglewood’s business in ways that are often hard to directly connect to it.

Alan