EDITION 528 – The Multiplier Effect

If you don’t move a troublesome employee on, what’s the multiplier effect of your inaction?
 
On your staff?
 
On yourself?
 
On your clientele?

If you don’t improve your systems and processes to accommodate change or growth, what’s the multiplier effect of keeping to your old ways?
 
There’s a financial cost of that indecision, that’s easy to calculate.
 
But what’s the personal cost?
 
What’s the cost of angst?
 
What’s the cost of lost opportunity?
 
What’s the cost of feeling like you’ve failed, when you’ve not acted, or not changed, when you should have?
 
I once wondered out aloud in a client meeting, that to be successful in business, owners should have just a little bit of mongrel about them. You don’t have to be a complete a-hole, but you do need to learn to push back.
 
Like the time years ago, when I sat on my hands and allowed my best performing accountant, to adopt a poor attitude in the workplace. To pick and choose the type of work they would and wouldn’t do. To allow them to adopt poor language and tone in the office. To, stupidly, hold them on a pedestal for the good work they did, but turn a blind eye to the destruction they created elsewhere.
 
Until the day, I said “that’s enough”.
 
The day when yet another young staff member presented themselves in tears, and I finally grew a set, and said to them “if you’re like that with another staff member, ever again, our next conversation will be considerably more formal than this one.”
 
What was the multiplier effect for me?
 
I’m sure we lost good staff, who felt the individual in question was a protected species, and as a leader of the business, I was unwilling to act.
 
Or needing to re-allocate work to other staff, who might not have had the skills, or the capacity, but did it nonetheless so they themselves progressed a little further in their own career. But it needed more of my involvement than I myself had the capacity to give, at those moments.
 
Even the stress I took home. The personal angst of wanting to build a workplace that had an inclusive and supportive culture, and where everyone headed in the same direction. Yet, the design looked a whole lot better than the model we actually had.
 
There are times in small and family business when you need to act, in the best interests of the business.
 
Or the best interests of the family that owns and operates the business.
 
Or indeed, in the best interest of you yourself, the owner.
 
For the multiplier effect can happen in real time. Or over time. Or, as I’ve observed in the mirror myself, a great deal of time afterwards. 

This Week’s Tip

“What’s the cost, over time, of your inaction, or your unwillingness to make a tough decision,
when you need to take it?”