The world suddenly seems to be filled with anxiety, loneliness, isolation, fear of a deadly virus, lockdowns, frustration, uncertainty, sadness, and all things negative. Families are fenced in, businesses are put on hold and basically everything is what my Aussie colleagues would call ‘shit-house’. The situation is quite exceptional and requires coping mechanisms we have not really needed to use before.
One thing that has surprised me in the whole corona situation, is the newly defined level of sensitivity required from everyone. In the dark times we need to see the positive, right? Right! But not too much! Someone might get offended. This is why this post has a daring element to it. Despite the danger that feelings may be hurt, I wish to share great news with you.
In the midst of the acute economic dire straits, Lektor was also hit by a major disruption. Our business of providing instructors / consultants came to a screeching halt in a matter of few days, as training operations were reorganised everywhere and freelancers were sent home. The training courses we had prepared for classroom delivery became obsolete in just weeks after being certified. An acute cash flow crisis popped up, so we needed to find solutions.
To overcome the tough times, our government opened up their support to business owners right after mid-March. The support was advertised as funding for business development in disruptive circumstances. It was made available through Business Finland, the Finnish government organization for innovation funding and trade, travel and investment promotion. Great! We really are experiencing a disruption, so this support sounds like something we could use.
The help does not come just by asking nicely, however. We needed to come up with a good plan first as the funding is for development activities. The plan we came up involved a re-design our training products to cope with the disruptive situation. For this, we are going to need a new professional to bring new designing power and we also need to look into some software options to help us with the new training solutions. If we were to get this funding, we could not only survive a little while longer, but actually hire a learning designer and create a job!
The plan took a week to formulate and the application was submitted in late March. Then the waiting game started. With a little bit of risk management, Lektor opened an application for the new position in the company while Business Finland was going through the huge pile of applications they had received in the first days after launching there support instruments. Then in mid-April there was an email waiting in my inbox. It asked to go check a new document that required my attention in Business Finland’s online service. There was the funding decision. And it was positive! I was trying to find a “Thank You So Much!” box in the online service but they only allowed me to accept or reject the funding decision. I accepted.
Now we really needed to get cracking. Just to get the positive funding decision required work, but then there is the actual work that needs to get done to actually get those funds to cover the company’s costs. The hiring process needed to close quickly and concrete steps toward the realisation of the project had to be taken. This funding we got now was preliminary, and its purpose is to set the stage for actual development work. Do the work well and there is a chance for continuation – do the work poorly and that is all we’ll get. We are very proud to have been granted this funding and we feel obliged to be worth the support. With enormous gratitude we thank Business Finland for the trust they showed us. This puts fuel in our tank!
And we did hire someone BTW. More about this on the next post.
Keep smiling and stay well
Samuli
