Do It Now…This too…

Do it now…Or it gets worse

Whether it’s our best customer or one that’s at the margin, the idea that we can (or should) give that account’s service needs the short shift is just plain short sighted.

In the end not doing what we know needs to be done will very likely come back to bite us. Take that low temp account where we know that the squeeze tubes are on their last legs. We’re running behind – or it’s late in the day and we’re tempted to wish it home and hope they’ll hold for another month. Of course they wont and their failure will come at the worst possible time for either us or that customer.

Ditto that customer with a new operator who we really need to give a full training session. We can give it a wish and a promise and hope for the best.

Or we can take a breath, spend that thirty minutes and give him a full training session. Skip it and chances are better than good that we’ll soon get an emergency call over a failure that the skipped session would have averted.

We’ve all been there and it’s tempting to take the easy way out. But we also know it’s both good for business and in the end easier on us if we don’t.

Next up: PM and actual prevention.

This too…shall pass

Once in a while we find ourselves in a really bad place and wonder if we’ll successfully exit that impending disaster still in one piece. It’s probable that we will, but that doesn’t erase the feeling and the sleep robbing worry that we might not.

What’s behind that deep pit of our stomach fear is that we’re kind of psychologically hard wired to think the worst outcome. That built in bias was probably valuably for cavemen who needed to make sure the tiger didn’t have them for dinner.

But for us it can prevent our taking action that might overcome a problem that’s otherwise causing us to freeze with worry. So the first thing we have to do is calm down and realize that the problem is likely not “the end”. A good way to get to that better place is to recall situations that we faced and that we either overcame or that weren’t near the disaster we envisioned.

Also let’s not forget that sometimes the crisis simply “evaporates” or it’s cured by itself. Like that competitors challenge to steal our biggest account that looked like a sure goner – but wasn’t when they miraculously decided to not risk accepting that aggressive offer.