PdP Powwow #2 by Jen: Resilience
So we began our intended 11:00am meeting at 12:22p.m. (late again!) with my Powwow on “Resilience” (read paragraph#4 on the link for significance of Powwow). I wasn’t scheduled to give my powwow til next week, so medyo hilaw pa siya. It wasn’t in its most ready state; I wanted more time to think about it to bring it to a more PdP level + I wanted to deliver it in Pecha Kucha (pronounce as pechakcha?) format, but I was pressed for time as I had only prepped it earlier that morning.
Nevertheless, I wanted to share this with my team already because I felt we needed it. I feel some people may have been sadder, more stressed out or lost in the past couple of weeks, so I felt this could be a pep talk of sorts. I don’t know if I was able to deliver it as effectively as I’d hoped, but I do hope it raised people’s spirits. It certainly did mine. In fact, I admitted to Gail earlier that morning that I needed this powwow for myself.
In my powwow, I detail 3 major points that overlap through resilience theories.
Resilient individuals/companies have the ability to:
- Face down reality (i.e. Maintain a positive outlook but not in denial)
- Search for meaning (i.e. See current challenges as building blocks for the future)
- Improvise (i.e. Make do with what’s available; come up with quick solutions when problems arise)
I have not hidden in my previous posts that our sales have been rather dismal lately. But I won’t let that bring us down so easily.
Over the years, I have seen PdP evolve from well, its rather selfish, meaningless existence (i.e. when we used to buy fabric vs. creating our own graphics for laptop sleeves; when we saw it only as a means for extra dough on the side) into a company with a higher purpose for existence, a company about people (now that we’ve added people to our team, are aiming to highlight our artists more, and are trying to connect people through our little events and webisodes).
Because of this, I intend to do all that I can to let people know more about our purpose, in hopes that each group or individual we get in touch with is inspired by our passion for elevating design, elevating the Filipino, and well, our passion for passion itself.
I am convinced that we are capable of doing something really important here, though it might not be immediately apparent yet because people might still see us a retail company more than anything else.
But I want to be a company that inspires. And not just inspires, but inspires to action.
When people see our merchandise, I want people to feel inclined to support fellow Filipinos, or for design-admirers to support our artists. When people see our webisodes, I want people to feel like they can achieve whatever they want to too. When people come to our events, I want them to feel like they’re part of something bigger.
So no, I’m not in denial of our current state as a business. And I do find meaning in this struggle, because it’s struggles like these that get us to move our asses. In previous years, we were relatively complacent as a business because sales came much more easily. I now take this period as a time for us to really reassess our priorities as a business. It’s now just a matter of quickly improvising while keeping our purpose in mind.
Let’s go PdP team! :D
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Powwowwow yippee yo yippee yay,
Jen
