In business, it’s important to remember that when the pain starts to hurt, you need to take action. While perhaps not physical pain, there’s a challenge that’s causing problems. You know it’s there and that it’s important.
A few years ago, I had surgery. It wasn’t a life or death situation but was serious enough that I had to spend the night, recovering in the hospital. During that time, I was given some pain medication.
At the start of her shift, when the overnight nurse came by check on me, she delivered some important advice. “You’re on painkillers right now but they’ll wear off,” she said. “When the pain starts to hurt, call us right away and we’ll get you more medication. Don’t try to be a tough guy, just call us.”
This was an important message for me to hear because my inclination is to ignore pain and try not to take too much medication. But after surgery, I had to trust the nurse’s evaluation that pain would be something I’d have to address for a few days.
In business, it can be tempting to ignore problems or painful situations and hope they’ll just go away. Here are some scenarios where you’ll need to take action when the pain starts to hurt:
Underperforming Employee
Let’s start with a really tough one. You have an employee who is not performing at the desired level and it’s becoming more and more of a problem.
Think of this challenge like a boat with a hole in it. At first, you can tolerate a little water coming in. But if you don’t do anything about the hole, more and more water will enter the boat.
With an underperforming employee, you have a few options:
- Extra training, more supervision, or mentoring. Do these if you believe the employee can grow and contribute more.
- Assign the employee to a different position that better matches their skills and interests. Like a flower, sometimes a change of scenery is all you need in order to bloom.
- If there are no signs that the level of performance you’re seeing is going to improve, then you need to separate from the employee. You don’t need to be mean but if it’s not working out for you, then it’s probably not working out for the other person either. While dismissing someone can be emotionally exhausting, finding a competent replacement may have you later say, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”
Not Knowing Your Goals
It’s easy to be seduced and kept busy by daily challenges and not think about long range goals. Your goals may always seem like something off in the distance that you can worry about at another time.
Unfortunately, this isn’t true and you need to act in the present to prepare for the future. Develop your two or three top priorities and come up with an action plan you’ll follow.
Some will do nothing else for one day, in order to make sure they have time to think and develop these strategies. Also, you may need to block off time every week to make sure you’re pursuing your goals.
Lack of Knowledge
When you or your team are lacking critical knowledge, your competition has a huge edge over you. Industries change over time and you need to keep up.
You or someone else needs to learn the new skills or you need to hire someone who understands them.
Staying ignorant isn’t a smart option, as a knowledge gap tends to grow over time.
Equipment Limitations
When the pain starts to hurt with equipment, you find yourself losing time or becoming frustrated. Is it time to upgrade to something better?
It’s common to only consider the cost of the investment. But you should also factor in repair costs, the equipment’s performance limit, and whether people have gotten used to tolerating a lack of reliability.
Improving equipment can even involve something as simple as a getting new office chair. Do you think you’ll get more work done in a chair that works properly, or one that slowly goes down due to worn out hydraulics?
I’ve seen people fight with worn out chairs and not even realize how much time they’re wasting on them.
Ken Okel Performs Virtual Keynotes Too
