Ian G Brown.com

I have learned a valuable lesson out of a domestic situation and that lesson can be applied to your business and mine.

I will spare you the graphic details, however, the inspiration for this post is inadequate storm water management by the local Municipal Council and the damage that storm water drain overflows cause to our property.

We have lived here for over five years, however the major incidents began a bit over two years ago. Coincidently, that is around the time that Council performed significant stormwater capture and drainage works further up the valley. Hmmm!

I exchanged correspondence regarding these serious issues with the Council over the period of a few months at that time and obtained some undertakings from it for remedial action to be performed with a low priority, due to the low frequency of flood events.

In the two years since, we have been flooded on four more occasions, two of them within a week recently. And absolutely no action during this two year period has been forthcoming from Council. It seems I was told what I wanted to hear and that Council never intended to take any action at all.   

The two recent incidents woke me up to the facts that I had been waiting for Council to act, instead of keeping the pressure on for it to act. I had been too trusting and too patient. I had failed to effectively follow up. I had forgotten the old adage – “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”.  

When it comes to my business, there are several lessons I learned from the whole ordeal. The first lesson is that when roadblocks occur in our businesses, and indeed in our lives, we need to find a way to push them out of the way and make it happen. We must not take our eye off the ball.    

However, there is one that most pertains to my business. And it pertains to yours as well. Delegation is the biggie here. I had effectively delegated the resolution task and responsibility to Council. I had let go of a “delegated task”. Remember, you can delegate the task, but you cannot delegate the responsibility. That remains with you as business owner for completion of the task in a timely manner.

I did indeed follow up recently, a number of times, and when I pressed Council for performance, I received a letter back from the Mayor basically dismissing my requests for action due to budgetary constraints. If I had followed through effectively at the beginning, two years ago, I would have received that resolution two years ago and had the opportunity then to react accordingly.   

So, when you hit a roadblock in your business, crash through it, get it resolved in a timely manner. Don’t delegate the responsibility. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen.  

Are you asking all the right questions when it comes to resolving roadblocks in your business?

Are you asking them often enough to keep the pressure on for a response or resolution?

Are you delegating the responsibility for tasks along with the task?

Leave me a comment below and let me know. And if you think others will obtain value from this, please pass it on by re tweeting or sending it over to Facebook.

To Your Outrageous Success

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