Procrastination is assuming you will get the chance to finish tomorrow what you had a chance to do today.
Procrastination is the act of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so.
The struggling of not finishing or waiting is at an all time high across our culture. One of the most frustrating things I hear as I coach organizations all across the country is, “I’m Waiting”. Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about rushing in to a major decision without the facts, without research, without the information you need to make a great decision. I’m talking about the frustration of having what you need and delaying to make the decision.
Do you know how much time, money, energy, bandwidth and culture impact waiting cost us? The struggle to make good decisions quickly is killing a lot of companies and cultures. I feel that there is an underlying fear across the business community that has a strangle hold on what we could be doing and the impact we could be making. The fear is usually about change or hurting someone’s feelings. In his book “Traction” Gino Wickman calls it the “36 hours of pain.” Make a decision, make the change. It almost always turns about better in the future when we make the decision to move forward. If you are unsure, John Maxwell says “just take the next logical step.” Waiting almost never makes things better.
The good book tells us that faith without works is dead. The lack of motion and movement is killing us. We need to make a decision. We need to take the next logical step. If the struggling team member has not improved in 6-8 months, what are we waiting on? The situation is not working for the team member or us. If the customer has been killing us for months, why are we waiting to cancel the contract and move on? If the vendor we always use has been getting worse and worse with wrong orders, delayed deliveries, out of stock supplies, and invoice issues, let’s get 3 new bids, pick one and move on. If one of our leadership team members has been creating more and more drama and is not really buying into to where we are going as an organization, go ahead and have them step down and replace them with someone that wants to contribute. One red flag for us to watch. If we find ourselves talking about the same situation, the same person, the same customer, the same vendor, over and over and over, it is a huge red flag that a situation has not been dealt with.
We can do this! You have probably been thinking of several challenges you are facing as you read this post. Let’s go ahead and take our “36 hours of pain.” Let’s go ahead and take the next logical step. Everybody in the organization usually already knows what needs to be done and they are just waiting on the boss to pull the trigger. Have the meeting. Review the facts. make the call. You got this!!