You don’t need to suffer, and waiting makes it harder to fix
The many reasons we put up with pain
Have you ever had a pair of shoes that always hurt, then took too long to replace them? Everyone’s experienced being annoyed with themselves for not making some change earlier. But why do we delay?
Interestingly, the reasons we delay can be very similar for uncomfortable shoes and things like the tools we use to run our business. Here’s a short list that you could probably add to:
- You don’t have the spare time to look for options
- You feel like it will cost more than you’re ready to pay
- You’re not confident the next choice will be any better
- Your current situation is familiar and you don’t like change
- It will involve getting other people to agree and that’s never easy
- You’re waiting for it to get better on its own
- You’re getting used to it, have some work-arounds, and everyone else puts up with it
- Your current situation wasn’t cheap and abandoning it feels like a loss
But the worst one is believing that there is no better option. All shoes hurt, so you have to put up with them. Or all businesses juggle tools that make everything hard to do.
Until the pain becomes too much
Eventually you’re pushed so far that you’re forced to make a change. But when it becomes too much to bear is the worst time to be looking for a solution. Instead of considering comfortable shoes from a variety of stores, you walk into the closest one and buy something marginally better, for too much. Or you try and shift your business into the option provided by the company with the biggest marketing budget, instead of the one that will solve your problems.
Businesses that wait for things to start failing before moving to a solution that supports them are putting themselves at risk. This is because shifting between solutions and changing tools is disruptive. Making the right choice take time. And making the change requires work from people who might already be overloaded. Leave it too long and you won’t have the capacity to benefit from the change before everything collapses.
Be aware of your pain, and keep an eye out for solutions
“Didn’t you say those shoes hurt?” “Yeah, they do, but I’ve sort of forgotten about it, I’ve been busy.”
When a business changes the way it gets things done, and the environment that supports that, it is rarely because just one thing became too much. In most cases it is because a whole collection of problems eventually outweighed the aversion to change.
This is the first post of 15 in a series that looks at issues you’re dealing with, and reveals the ways in which things could be so much better. Instead of bookmarking this blog and hoping you’ll remember it, consider subscribing and reading them at your own convenience.