Go faster or slow down? When the pressure's on what do you do? Most of us speed up, nerves running hard and the mind whirring like a top. Is that always the best way. Let's look at a story I read some time ago - I cannot recall where - and see if there's a better way.
Jim and three of his coworkers had been tasked to clean out an old warehouse. It was a sweltering morning already, and the radio weather reader - isn't that all they are - had predicted it would be getting worse. He recalled the report saying the high temperature would be 97, but with the humidity it would feel more like 105. He laughed to himself when he wondered why they didn't just say it was going to be 105 if that's what it would feel like. It seemed to him, at that moment already bathed in sweat, a little silly to tell him what it would feel like if there were more clouds and a lot less humidity. This was going to be a long day.
Glancing down at the watch his wife of 20 years had just given him to commemorate the occasion, he told the guys they needed to get back to work. Remembering the watch's special meaning, he decided to take it off and put it in his pocket where it would be less exposed to scratching and banging. Six hours later the men came out of the warehouse that had been freshly purged of 10 years of junk, dirt and rust. Jim reached into his pocket to retrieve his watch and found nothing. Panic. Forgetting to breathe. Dizzy. What would his wife say? How much would she be hurt if he had to tell her the watch was already lost. He told his buddies and the four of them went frantically searching in the warehouse, refuse piles and even their truck. No watch.
Does this feel like anything your going through right now? There's a problem and you are running like crazy as fast as you can, but it seems the faster you run the farther you feel from an answer. The boss hates your presentation draft. Your sales pitch isn't ready. The quality issues in your team continue no matter what you try. If not you, then maybe you know someone who is. I encourage you to read on.
When they emerged from the building an hour later and still without the watch, the three men were trying to console Jim, apologizing for not being able to locate the watch. A young, scruffy little kid who'd been hanging around during the afternoon heard the conversation and quietly slipped into the warehouse through the door. Five minutes later he jumped in front of the truck as the men were driving away, walked to the cab and handed Jim his watch.
The four men wondered how this could be, they'd looked everywhere...twice. How had he found it so fast? The boy simply answered, "I laid down on the floor, very still and quiet. I could hear the watch ticking so I just moved toward the ticking and there it was under a pile of rubbish."
You see, in all the rushing and frantic action they'd missed the best opportunity to find the watch - in fact they made it impossible to find it.
Many of us deceive ourselves into thinking that we do our best work under pressure, almost creating artificial fires so we can hammer things out at the last. And we've proven our ability to make this model work. You're smart, you know your business and frankly like the harried pace. But does it offer our best? I learned some time ago from valuable mentors the value of taking time out to think about things - to re-evaluate my assumptions and see if new thinking emerges. I've been shocked by how often I've missed things in the hustle - and so are you.
Let me offer you three steps for dealing with your current struggle.
1. Know that you are the right person for the task. Nothing will get in the way of solution faster than doubt and a lack of confidence in ourselves.
2. Ask for input from multiple people of different disciplines. It isn't popular today to admit that we need help, but it is the genius that realizes his own blind spots and asks for guidance from trusted advisers.
3. Focus on strategy and alignment first, then process, then people. I was once asked to look at a process for responding to pricing requests that were taking too long. After a little digging I began to wonder whether this was the problem at all. Pricing requests had been growing astronomically, telling me that what we were offering wasn't good enough. That is what had to be dealt with.
It was a strategy, capabilities and product problem, not a pricing process issue. We could have spent months fixing the process, but our strategy and competitive issues would be masked. Only once you've made sure your strategy is clear and that processes are reasonable, then you can focus on the performance of people.
It's easy to blame people, but the system might be set up for them to fail and you might not know it.
