Briljent Team

Congratulations! We have made it to March! For those of us living in the Midwest and the North that is significant as we are quickly moving toward spring. This means we have successfully dealt with another winter and can finally see longer and warmer days in our future.

I am pleased to present this month’s blog post as part of our series on Briljent’s (Non-Negotiable Items) NNIs.

“Never Let Donkeys In The Pool”

“Deal With It” was the NNI that I immediately volunteered to share some thoughts on for the series. While I was not with Briljent when the NNIs were originally developed, this one really hits home for me. I see it as a driver for both personal success and fulfillment as well as making Briljent an amazing place to work.

While dealing with the change of seasons is a small obstacle for most of us, we all face numerous challenges in our personal and work lives on a regular basis. A task or assignment that is harder than expected, a co-worker who has a different approach than your own or perhaps a demanding client with high expectations. Instead of running from, or simply avoiding, an overwhelming task, “Deal With It” forces us to accept it and see what it’s like to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed and still be able to take action. This is at the core of this NNI to me.

I have witnessed this first-hand at Briljent time and again. In one recent example, the Finance and IT teams have proactively dealt with a supplier providing significantly sub-par services and showing little in the way of active communication or support to our team(s). While this situation has been very frustrating for all involved, Eric and Jason quickly developed and executed a plan while ensuring our current supplier was held accountable.

They proactively sought support from our existing vendor, giving them ample opportunity to engage with us and solve problems on their end. When that produced little in the way of overall improvement, IT immediately started a search for a replacement vendor. Our Finance team of Mitchel, Kim, and Joel have dealt with the operational challenges resulting from this vendor’s shortcomings (think about our financial ledger not being available during a month-end closing cycle!) through workarounds, shear effort, and determination—all while knowing that change was coming. Beginning next week, we fully expect our new solution and partner to be operational. The teams have perfectly demonstrated the “Deal With It” mentality.

In this case it was critical to identify that the current vendor was unable to accommodate our business needs and was not able to communicate a plan to change their performance. Our teams did not accept this performance and moved in a different direction quickly and decisively. I applaud them all for their collective efforts in support of one another and Briljent.

Thanks for reading this month’s blog entry and please share your instances of “Deal With It” in your personal or business life in responding to this post. We look forward to hearing your stories!