Why Preventative Action Trumps Contingent Action Every Time

I was on a conference call yesterday afternoon with a colleague who informed me that it was raining inside her car.

Apparently, the vents in her sunroof were clogged. A little bit of preventative maintenance would have prevented Mother Nature from raining on her parade.

As her story unfolded, I began to think about those organizations that fail to do any work on themselves until it’s absolutely necessary. By then, the damage has been done.

The poor attitudes of those who should have been fired a long time ago have tainted those on the fence.

Leaders, who had potential, have already shot themselves in the foot and are dead on arrival by the time they are shipped to the Holiday Inn for a shot of training.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are three steps you can take to unclog your organization.

1. Remove communication barriers that are preventing people from being heard at the top. You can’t fix things if you don’t know about them, and you can’t know about them if you have a blockage in your system.
2. Do an annual checkup. It’s a good idea to do a temperature check of the organization, even if you think you know what the reading will be. You’d be amazed what a difference being off by a few degrees can make. This approach will allow you to make reasonable adjustments before extensive work is necessary.
3. Stop what you're doing when you sense there is a problem and take care of the issue at hand. My colleague said she knew her sunroof was clogged, yet she went about her day without giving much thought to the problem until it started raining inside her car. She could have avoided this expensive and uncomfortable situation, had she taken care of the problem the moment she knew about it.

I hope that by now the rain has stopped and that my colleague can clearly see what she could have done to avoid this situation, so she doesn’t make this mistake again.

The forecast may be sunny in your area but eventually things will cloud up, and the rains will come in. Take preventative action now, and you’ll easily weather whatever comes your way.

Need help weathering this downturn? Reach out to me at [email protected] and we'll get a call on the calendar.