The Pressure Cooker
Introduction
In this daily pit stop, I want to talk to you about the pressure cooker.
So what do I mean about the pressure cooker?
Something that I see in our business, in all our client’s businesses, and that’s where situations occur.
Decisions
Where are the decisions being made?
Look back at the lacks of the last six months.
Did you make a decision that ultimately was a short-term snap which was made out of a pressure situation, or was it done with content and thought?
Recently with a business it was all about recruitment.
They’ve got a salesperson who had left or a senior sales person left and they didn’t really quite act quick enough to sort of make sure they’d replaced that person.
Then they sort of went through a recruitment process like most companies do, it’s pretty straightforward.
Then really what happens then is they’ve got really three candidates down.
In truth, none of them were probably a good fit, or I wouldn’t say any good but they got certain skills, but none of them was fit.
That pressure to make a decision, so to take that person in, of course, you can guess the story from here, that doesn’t really work out that well.
There are decisions to be made around performance and underperformance and then that starts to consume them.
Every day they’re talking about why the sales person’s not meeting quota or not doing what they should be doing.
Ultimately that’s a hire that gets managed out of the business within six to seven weeks.
Recruitment fees, wasted time, wasted training, and that’s just one example of making the wrong decision under pressure.
Pressure
So it’s all about getting organised.
I want you to look at your pressure cooker situations.
If you’re a business leader, what are you suffering with?
Have you got a partner or a colleague you can talk that out with and get a second opinion?
If you’re looking at your managers in your business, ultimately, take time out, take five minutes out with them, to understand what pressures they may be masking and hiding.
It’s not uncommon for managers to feel that they don’t want to open up because they don’t want their superiors to think that they’re not managing in the situation.
So, big job, once a week, twice a week, sit down with them, see where you can help them.
Identify these pressure points.
Learn to flatten out those decisions.
Hopefully, then, you’re going to start to be able to make a lot better sort of decisions that are going to be less costly and get better results for your business.
So, identify the pressure cooker for yourself, for your management.