Self-Inflicted Wounds

How many of the wounds your company suffers are self-inflicted?

Example

A residential homebuilder met with new buyers (often couples), to make brick, siding, flooring, cabinets and other amenity selections. Just prior to starting construction, he’d ask “Are there any changes you’d like to make?”

This question resulted in buyers revisiting earlier selections, with which they were happy, which all-too-often resulted in dissatisfaction and disagreements about what the selections should be…an obviously self-inflicted wound.

Had the homebuilder not asked “Are there any changes you’d like to make?” and simply begun construction, the buyers would have enjoyed seeing their dream home become a reality.

Other self-inflicted wounds

These examples are taken from situations I observed.

You don’t allow employees, who have no need to meet customers in person, to work from home. Your rationale is that they won’t be as productive working from home. The result? Your most talented workers leave because they can find employment anywhere. You’re left with, at best, a mediocre workforce.

In an attempt to keep customers happy, you take on work that your organization is ill-equipped to do. In the process, you lose credibility with the customer. As a result they either:

• Begin paying more slowly.
• Renegotiate your price.
• Leave for a more reliable vendor.

Budgets that leaders in your organization submit don’t meet your expectations for revenue and profit growth for the coming year so you establish across-the-board increases in revenue and decreases in expenses…without regard to where each of your offerings are in their life cycle. Consequently, your most recent product/service launches don’t get the marketing dollars they need for an effective launch, which slows revenue growth. Offerings in the decline stage of its life cycle are tasked with revenue targets that are impossible to meet…plus they have expense budgets in excess of their needs.

You develop a compensation program for your administrative folks in which bonuses are tied to return on average capital employed.. Because administrative people have no clue as to how their work impacts return on average capital employed, if they hit the target the bonus will feel like a holiday bonus…not something they earned.

Sales compensation is tied to new account development. Your salespeople have no reason to visit existing customers which precludes customer loyalty from developing with your company.

It also limits your sales force’s ability to generate more sales from existing customers…which we all know is cheaper than acquiring new customers.

The average age of your accounts receivable is growing. You instruct the collection department to become more firm in their efforts when the real reason is that your quality or delivery times have declined. Now you’re antagonizing your customers with poor quality or missed delivery times PLUS you’re hounding them for quicker payment.

You have a customer who is abusing the terms of your agreement. You establish a policy to prevent this from happening again. As a result you lose good customers who find the new policy onerous. You could have avoided these losses by simply firing the offending customer.

You have a vendor who is consistently unreliable, but you don’t feel that you have the time to find an alternative. Not only are you incurring unnecessary costs in dealing with this vendor, if their product/service impacts your ability to deliver on the promises you made, you risk losing your better customers.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Recovering from self-inflicted wounds

The question know is: What wounds are I experiencing and what did I do to cause them? Here’s the reality: we contribute to every problem we face…I’m not exempt from this malady.

When problems arise, if we first ask ourselves: What have I done that’s contributed to this problem?

Once you identify your contribution to the problem, acknowledge it in front of those impacted and share with them how you intend to remedy it. The vast majority of people are gracious when you admit your contribution to the problem. In part because they know the courage it takes to make the admission and, in part, because they recognize that they too contributed to the problem and are willing to admit because of your admission.

Avoiding self-inflicted wounds

Many of you, like me, prefer not to self-inflict wounds so how do avoid doing so?

The simple answer is: Before deciding on a course of action, look for the impact that your decision will have on the other party(ies), whether that’s a customer, employee or vendor.

Put yourself in their shoes and ask, how would I feel if I:

• Had this policy dictated to me?
• Wasn’t consulted before an expectation was created?
• Had my livelihood impacted?
• Was left dealing with chaos not of my making?

It’s questions like these that enable you to gain outsiders’ perspectives on what you’re about to do before finalizing your decision. With this approach you’ll avoid self-inflicted wounds AND save your company the costs of recovering from these wounds.

Takeaways

Many of the wounds you experience, whether in business or in your personal life, are self-inflicted. That is, they are of our own creation.Some people try to soften this reality by calling the wounds “unintended consequences.” To me, that they’re avoiding admitting that they contributed to the problem they’re facing.

The reality is that these consequences could have been anticipated if they’d considered the impact on those with those whom they interacted before deciding on a course of action.

Before instituting any policy, compensation program or “solution,” ask yourself: If I do this how will the others involved react? In other words, put yourself into their shoes and think about how you’d react if you were on the receiving end of your decision. It’s a simple way to avoid adding more self-inflicted wounds to an already battered body.

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If you’d like the leaders in your organization to learn how to use the numbers more effectively and dramatically improve the productivity of your workforce, contact me to learn more about these resources:

Resources

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.

Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.