What happens when you resolve to keep moving forward?

Sometimes resolve can feel like it’s out of your control.

One of the challenges I face in consulting is dealing with the lack of resolve by clients.

An organization my firm worked with called me and told me they were having what they described as a critical problem. They needed to save $200 million and asked if I could help. Without skipping a beat, I told them that if we could identify $200 million worth of projects, we could help them meet their goal.

In the end, we did help them meet that goal.

In fact, we exceeded it.

We had a five-year contract with this firm and I told them there were still plenty of additional savings we could help them achieve. And their response?

“No thanks, we can take care of the rest of it ourselves now that we know what to do.” And they suddenly canceled our agreement.

Another client called wanting our firm to help them save $100 million and we more than doubled that, saving them $250 million.

As was the case with the first company, we had a long-term agreement with this organization and they also wanted to cancel, thinking that because they had already saved more than twice their goal, they did not need us anymore.

This time, we had the opportunity to show them how we could build on current work to save them more. And they agreed. We ultimately saved them $1.5 billion. That’s billion with a B. Good enough wasn’t enough for this organization. They resolved to keep going and became an even stronger company.

Here is the moral of my story.

The first company ended up filing for bankruptcy five years after canceling our agreement. The second went on to set even higher goals, all of which we helped them achieve.

This is not about me or my firm saving the day or rescuing a company. It’s about the power of resolve. One company resolved to keep moving forward, while another was satisfied with good enough.

When you resolve to keep moving forward and don’t settle for the status quo, amazing results can happen.