The Crochet Tablecloth (True Story)

The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in urban Brooklyn, arrived in early October excited about their opportunities.  When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work.

They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve. They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc. and on Dec. 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished.
 
On December 19 a terrible tempest - a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days.  On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church.  His heart sunk when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 6 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.  The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home. 

On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in.  One of the items was a beautiful, hand-made, ivory colored, crochet tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross-embroidered right in the center.  It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall.  He bought it and headed back to the church.

By this time it had started to snow.  An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it.  The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later. She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc. to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry.  The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area. Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle.  Her face was like a sheet.

"Pastor," she asked, "Where did you get that tablecloth?"  The pastor explained.  The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crochet into it there.  They were.  These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.  The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the tablecloth.  The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria.  When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave.  Her husband was going to follow her the next week.  She was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.

The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church.  The pastor insisted on driving her home.  That was the least he could do.  She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.

What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve.  The church was almost full.  The music and the spirit were great.  At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return.  One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood, continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he was not leaving. 

The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike?  He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety, and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a concentration camp.  He never saw his wife or his home again for all the 35 years in between.
The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier.  He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and the pastor saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.

(Disseminated by Pastor Rob Reid).

Now, experts Agree that more businesses face an unstable business environment. Improvements in data processing and
telecommunications have produced significant changes in many industries. In addition to this, improvements in transportation and
the development of foreign economies (specifically in Europe and Asia) have created a worldwide market and redefined certain
industries. In addition, as consumers are vulnerable to more options, loyalty has become less important than it once was; a
slightly better deal or a temporary shortage of inventory can easily result in the loss of consumers. Competitors also can alter
rapidly, with new ones appearing out of nowhere (often this means another side of the globe). With the instability of the global
market, it's vital that you make strategic planning part of your overall company strategy.

Proactive Versus Reactive Management. A few decades ago, you could set and maintain a business by reacting to and fulfilling
changes in tastes, costs and prices. This reactive type of direction was frequently enough to help keep the company moving.
However, today changes occur fast and come from a number of directions. By the time a reactive manager can make the necessary
alterations, he or she might lose many customers -- maybe for good.

Proactive Planning is the expectation of future events. Decisions are based on predictions of future conditions of the environment
instead of responses to several disasters as they occur. Proactive planning within an unstable, technology-driven business
environment is important to ongoing success in just about any endeavor. As opposed to responding to the situation as it changes,
proactive preparation requires that you analyze environmental forces and earn resource-allocation decisions. By doing this you can
take your business where it ought to be in the next month, decade and year. Barry Worth, a consultant specializing in small
business management, puts it this way: Now's entrepreneur has to be a business architect. Anything constructed in the present
business environment has to have a step-by-step blueprint or plan about the best way best to reach success. The blueprint for
today's business owner is a company plan.

The Need For a Strategic Plan. Planning plays an important role in any business venture. It may make the difference between the
success or failure of your organization. You need to aim carefully before investing your time and, especially, your money in any
business enterprise. The demand for a strategy is best exemplified by the following scenario -"A Tale of Two Businesses."

Two franchises (A and B) were started by people who had worked in management in much bigger businesses. While Franchise A supplied
a item and Franchise B per service, the outcome of the franchise systems had been marketed exclusively in the United States before
the present owners became more involved. The output of the two was readily available in several other developed countries as well.
The franchises opened about precisely the exact same time and franchisee had a strong market presence, nor do they at present. Now
Franchise B is bankrupt. By contrast, Franchise A is selling products in the Midwestern United States and in Europe.

What was the Determining difference from both franchises' success? You probably expect it to be that one had developed a strategic
plan and the other had not; howeverit is not this simple. Many factors can influence the result of a business venture. There were
many similarities between the franchises, but there were also many differences.

Most notably, Franchise A marketed a product and Franchise B per service (although this does not clearly limit options). Another
difference was that Franchise A had a closely thought-out plan. The investors understood as they looked to get a franchise partner
that they wanted to find something that could satisfy global markets and a franchiser who would encourage that kind of sales
campaign. These investors were based in the Midwest, but negotiated for exclusive rights to export the franchiser's product. After
they had obtained the franchise, and as they started to establish their business domesticallythey also started to contact
government specialists in the U.S. Department of Commerce as well as educators and local managers with global experience.

Clear plans Were developed outlining how they would position, market and distribute the product and which foreign markets would be
targeted first. Even as they were building sales in one European market, they had been attending trade shows and planning entry
strategies in others.

By contrast, The second investor (Franchise B) began his business strictly because he wanted to leave a former employer. Of course
many small businesses get started this waynonetheless, in this case no evaluation of franchising alternatives was done. The
business has been located in an area that, as it turned out, included virtually no consumers for the type of service being
offered. If this error was realized, it had been too late to proceed --the investor only didn't have the cash or the desire to
risk starting back again.

Other examples Further show the need for strategic planning and for creating a clear business strategy. The owner of a business
that seemed to be performing quite well in two locations was about to start in a thirdparty. The authors were called in to create
a benefits policy and discovered cash flow problems that could be found only after operations had begun in the new site. After
analyzing the situation, an expansion and financial plan was developed for the sound locations only. In another situation, the
authors determined that a company had bought more equipment than was needed to accomplish the present workload.

After careful Evaluation, plans to make additional purchases were placed on hold, along with the equipment available was utilized
effectively to meet immediate demands.

A business Enterprise is to complex to assume that failure to develop a sound business Plan is going to be the cause for issues
Nevertheless, this failure frequently counts Among the factors contributing to business difficulties. As Worth has stated, "Being
a company entrepreneur today takes constant vigilance in order to Be in a position to take advantage of new opportunities and the
availability of new Information and technology as they come into being." The first step in Doing this is to have a plan.