Most times, the easiest thing we have conditioned our minds to do when we face unfavourable situations in our organisations is to give excuses or rationalise our failures. Interestingly, as individuals or organisations sources of excuses will abound in all we do, but one thing everyone should know – like Dave Del Dotto said: “No one ever excused his or her way to success” – and no organisation is at exception, no matter how nice the excuses sounded.
Proactive organisations desire to have excellent results in all areas of their business operations. In reality, desiring or wishing to achieve excellent results is not enough. Achieving excellent results will require every workforce to decide and give his/her best regardless of any circumstance. This means that every employee should be productive on a daily basis without any rationalisation for failure. Unfortunately, in the last few years organisations have suffered a great deal because of people who have what I call “good reasons” for poor performance. This group of people will always have reasons or justifications to defend their poor performance. They forgot that organisations thrive when the results are excellent and not when reasons for non-performance abound.
The truth of the matter is that no organisation in the world that can provide all the required resources, man power, tools, expertise, and platform that would be needed to run effectively. That means there might be something to blame the organisation for – if that is necessary. But then, it is not in our best interest to keep blaming the organisations for our failures. The reason is because even in our individual families we encourage our children to make the most out of what is available. That should be the same mindset we ought to have with our organisations – to make the most out of what is available. The focus should be to give our best regardless of any circumstance.
I am not advocating that organisations should not provide necessities for effective running of the business. I am trying to say that in a situation where all that are required are not available for one reason or the other, every member of the staff should make the most out of what is available and simply have the mind of delivering results.
Most people in the organisation are used to giving various “good reasons” for their poor performances. For a marketer, a perceived good reason for not meeting up with an appointment could be non-availability of an official car. For a customer service officer, his or her reason for let’s say talking back to an irate customer could be because the customer called her names in the presence of everybody. Really, having “good reasons” to justify our actions or poor performance will neither give the individual nor the organisation a competitive edge.
Imagine an MD of an airline or the staff members saying they have “a good justification” as to why their airline crashed. You will agree with me that no reason or justification given would ever make people to patronise that particular airline or take them seriously. As employees, we do not have any justification, reason or rationalisation for poor performance if we decide to achieve the best regardless of any circumstance.
Then, again, like I said earlier – resources, tools and the things required to carry out one’s duty in the organisation might not be adequate (which is usually the case) – you just have to make the most out of what is in your hand. The question everyone should ask is – why is it that in the same situation, some employees are making a difference in the organisation or in the customer’s life while others are performing poorly? I think making the right decision makes the difference. We must decide to be the best for our organisation regardless of any circumstance. Without this mindset of being or doing your best regardless of the present circumstance, one will end up performing sub-optimally most of the times. And, remember, no stakeholder or shareholder will absolve your poor performance because you have justifiable reasons to give.
Trying to excuse one’s way to success will be akin to one deliberately stopping his wristwatch or time piece and expecting to have accuracy of time, or worst still believing that other people’s time piece would stop all because he chose to stop his. The game changer for us will be to drop our proverbial “excuse” cap at home and put on our “will do my best” cap to the office. When everyone – from the CEO to the entry level person begin to internalise and understand that excuses will not take them to the promise land, they will rise above excuse giving – to seeking solution(s).
In conclusion, like Florence Nightingale said, I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse. That should be our guiding principle, never to give or take excuses. The truth is that 90 percent of the time, people will like to give reasons for failure, but when they know there is no room for excuses, they tend to do things differently. In 1997, I had a great lesson from my eldest brother – to always have it at the back of my mind “to deliver results” whenever I am asked to do something. Reasons for failure are likely to abound if we allow them to foster, but our goal should be to deliver results regardless of any situation.
Always remember, we are always faced with two choices, either to give reasons and justify our failures or to seek for solution(s) regardless of the circumstance.
UJU ONWUZULIKE
