Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. Although we plan for things to operate perfectly, many times we find snafus in our plans as they are being executed. In my mind, what makes a great person isn’t how well you lead your team each day, but how you overcome hiccups as they arise.
In business we execute with deadlines and measure ourselves through quarterly goals. How we meet those goals is how we determine the success and efficiency of our team. At Club Solutions, we have revenue goals for advertising sales, but we also have editorial goals and deadlines. On a 12-month plan, we rarely have any hiccups in hitting deadlines or issues within our plan.
However, it would be naïve of me to believe that on a 12-month plan, we would never have any issues arise. When an issue arises, my immediate instinct is to think back to the plan. I reevaluate the plan as if we hadn’t begun to execute. If I knew, when initially working through the plan that I’d have a road block, if I went one direction, then what would I do differently?
Dwelling and complaining about a plan falling through doesn’t help me solve the problem. Instead, it merely takes up time and gives me something to do outside of resolving the issue.
Recently, as I ran into a situation, I quickly reevaluated the plan in this way. I realized that I had leaned on a solution without worry that it might fall through. With every execution, there is always the possibility for something to go wrong, regardless of how many times it has gone right.
This doesn’t mean that you should become so jaded that you don’t trust. But, you must be aware that things, from time to time, can go wrong. How do you solve that problem?
Every problem will have a different solution. Although, by working back to the original plan, identifying the end goal and then working through problem again — this time identifying what issues arose and working around them — you can reach a solution.
Hopefully you will be able to identify an issue within your plan before you are close to reaching your deadline. But, sometimes you have to be nimble on your feet and able to fix problems with minimal time.
Being able to work through problems without creating more problems for your team is one characteristic of a good leader. What type of problems have you had to work through recently, and how did you resolve those problems? Tell me how you’re a great problem solver in the comment section below!
Tyler Montgomery is the Editor of Club Solutions Magazine. Contact him at tyler@clubsolutionsmagazine.com.
