Don't procrastinate . . . Inaction is a decision.

by Fred F. Richards, Jr.

Valuable lessons are often not learned from books.

As a small child, my grandmother cautioned me many times about not trying to help meat that had been ground in our meat grinder from being stuck in the grinder holes. When her back was turned one day making a mince-meat pie, I stuck my right index finger into the rotating part of the grinder and promptly pulled back a bloody finger. You can bet that I never did that again.

The paralysis of Committees

A committee on which I once served spent four weeks trying to decide which of about five alternative approaches to the problem, the committee members should try first. The division manager came into the meeting at the beginning of the fifth week wondering what progress had been made. He was informed that we were trying to determine the best approach. He then asked, "How long would it take to determine if Alternative one was feasible. "Two days", was the reply. Alternative two was one day. Alternative three was four days. Alternative five was one week. Slamming his fist on the table, he said, "You could have tried all five and been done with it in less time than you have spent trying to decide."

To say, the division manager was not a happy camper would be an understatement. Failure to take action is a decision.

Trust Your Gut!

Many years ago, I learned a very valuable lesson from one of my mentors. And every time since then that I have not followed that lesson, it has cost me not only time and further anguish but also in many cases, a great deal of money.

A financial assistant joined the firm who was responsible for preparing financial reviews of companies in which the firm had an interest. This was before the days of computers and a lot of the work was done on Friden calculating machines. The analysis for each company was uniform throughout our briefings for which I was ultimately responsible for the output.

After about the third month, one of the calculations was seriously out of kilter according to previous months standards. I caught the mistake in time to have it corrected and asked the financial assistant to prepare the new numbers. Later that morning, I was called into a briefing meeting on that company and picked up what I thought was the corrected briefing papers.

My mentor caught the mistake in about two shakes and accepted my apology when I immediately returned to my desk and obtained the corrected briefing papers.

Two weeks later, the same thing happened. However, this time the mentor told me to terminate the employee immediately. When I pressed for an answer for terminating this employee, he simply replied, "You can't take your valuable time to check for mistakes. If you don't terminate this employee, you will be spending an inordinate amount of time verifying the accuracy of the data."

Whereupon I left the office and after talking to the employee and stressing that more care had to be taken, I decided not to terminate the young assistant who was divorced and responsible for three children under the age of 5. I said that "It should not happen again, or we would have to make changes."

The next day at 9 a.m. I told my mentor about my decision and counseling session with this employee. He again simply said, "Either the employee goes before 10 a.m. or you do. Once you decide an employee needs to be watched, it is best to find an employee that you don't have to worry about the accuracy of their work! Procrastination rarely brings good results!"

This piece of advice was perhaps the most important piece of employee relationship advice I ever learned. Over the years, every time we tried to be compassionate or overlook incompetency, or failure to perform adequately, it has cost dearly!

You can try to change a leopards spots . . . but realize it is a futile battle!

Fred Richards

Last updated - February 28, 2007