It’s been six months since Terry stepped down as CEO of People Potential. And even though I’ve had 16 years of sales and business consulting experience in the tech industry, I was somewhat new to the learning and development arena. In 2019 I joined People Potential to head up the sales department; just one year later, I would face the biggest challenge of my career – the pandemic.
When all training was cancelled or postponed, it felt like a freight train of uncertainty had hit us. Unless we quickly turned things around, the lack of cash flow threatened the sustainability of the business in its current size. But I was lucky. We have a team that banded together. They were able to quickly change direction in the face of uncertainty and had the mental fortitude to swim against a strong current.
It became obvious that Terry had established People Potential on a strong set of values and built a culture that had been consistent these last three decades. So when the pandemic hit, and even though we were unprepared, the creative, always-learning, and enduring spirit of my colleagues brought us back from the brink of disaster.
Terry leaves me with a legacy. Clients trust that, with People Potential, they’ll always experience expertise – that their people will always receive well-designed, engaging, and impactful training programmes. So when we transitioned into virtual training, our clients (as doubtful as they were with the effectiveness of virtual training) continued to trust us to do a good job and we were able to get the business back to pre-pandemic levels.
“Good news! I’m not going anywhere”, Terry said with a grin. He continues to serve as our Director of Organisational Development and Strategy, and he’s someone that I will lean on for guidance.
Our commitment to you is that in the years to come, we’ll enhance the experience that you rely on to develop your employees, with in-house training design, training programmes and post-training interventions that matter most to your organisation. We are prioritising investments to hire subject matter experts to raise the bar in training quality.
I look forward to continuing and building on Terry’s legacy of trust that he’s built with you.
Till we meet,
Melanie Aloysius
P.S. Terry wrote a not-going-anywhere outgoing CEO message too.