How to Handle Problems at Work
How do you handle problems when they come up at work? Do you address them forthwith? Or maybe you push them under the rug, so to speak, hoping they'll go away. Maybe you handle some right away, and put others off, depending on the sort of problem. We'll take a look at this today and try to connect how we handle our problems at work with our spiritual life.
If you take the time to think about "problems," you'll likely find, as did I, that there's a whole range of them, something like a color palette.
Some are big, some little, most in between. Lots of them spawn what we might cause "sub-problems," which is why this color palette serves as an appropriate image. A simple example: You have pretty serious lower back pain. Trying to avoid or minimize it, you wind up straining other parts of your body. It's bad enough such that it effects your ability to get to and from work, and when you do get there, your ability to do your best is impaired. Maybe that causes problems with your boss, or at least puts you behind the eight ball in trying to meet your deadlines (another problem). And on and on it goes.
We're not going to try to go through every conceivable sort of problem here. Frankly, having not thought about this in great depth before, I was surprised by the sheer amount of different sorts of problems flopping around out there. Not only was I finding a huge breadth and depth of types of problems, but it soon became clear that, along with so many types of problems, each carries a unique "weight" in terms of its impact on us. And that's what eventually led to this image of the color palette (see above) as a convenient way to illustrate how problems inevitably interact with each other.
Originally, I had planned to distinguish between personal and business problems. But our example of the back pain can serve to illustrate that you really can't do that. Personal problems will impact your business; conversely, business problems will likely spill over into your personal life. For example, if you're under tremendous stress at work (bad boss, work overload, company being taken over with the likelihood you'll lose your job, etc.), that alone can precipitate back pain, which is notoriously caused by emotional stress.
Understanding that, it seems evident that, as a general rule, we want to handle problems quickly and efficiently as they arise. There are, of course, exceptions. Sometime it's best to put off dealing with a problem. An obvious example: a problematic co-worker or employee who will soon be leaving your company really doesn't need special attention. If you can keep things under wraps for a bit, the problem will soon go away. But such situations are, again, exceptions.
So aggressively attacking problems forthwith would seem to be the default position here. The one caveat to this would be situations where the exact nature and scope of the problem aren't all that evident.
An example here from personal experience: Our firm has been involved in a fairly complex transaction involving various members of the same family, along with their legal representatives. The lawyers, naturally, immediately began issuing directives, some far beyond the scope of their expertise (no surprise, since, after all, they're lawyers!). While our cooperating with the various interests was paramount, I had to insist on taking a step back. It was important that I clearly define the problems that needed solving and the role our firm had to play in the transaction based on the particular expertise we bring to the table. That took both some in depth analysis to break down the transaction into its component parts, along with our clearly communicating our findings to the various parties. That, of course, took some time. But it has proven to be critical to a successful execution of the transaction (still in process). Had we not taken a step back and done the necessary analysis and instead naively followed those initial directives from the attorneys, this thing would inevitably be bolloxed, perhaps beyond repair.
Okay, having considered the caveats and looked at some exceptions to the rule, let's settle on the wisdom of addressing problems swiftly and thoroughly as a general rule. Next time, we'll see not only how that will generally serve us well, but how we can connect this with our spiritual lives.
If you take the time to think about "problems," you'll likely find, as did I, that there's a whole range of them, something like a color palette.
Some are big, some little, most in between. Lots of them spawn what we might cause "sub-problems," which is why this color palette serves as an appropriate image. A simple example: You have pretty serious lower back pain. Trying to avoid or minimize it, you wind up straining other parts of your body. It's bad enough such that it effects your ability to get to and from work, and when you do get there, your ability to do your best is impaired. Maybe that causes problems with your boss, or at least puts you behind the eight ball in trying to meet your deadlines (another problem). And on and on it goes.
We're not going to try to go through every conceivable sort of problem here. Frankly, having not thought about this in great depth before, I was surprised by the sheer amount of different sorts of problems flopping around out there. Not only was I finding a huge breadth and depth of types of problems, but it soon became clear that, along with so many types of problems, each carries a unique "weight" in terms of its impact on us. And that's what eventually led to this image of the color palette (see above) as a convenient way to illustrate how problems inevitably interact with each other.
Originally, I had planned to distinguish between personal and business problems. But our example of the back pain can serve to illustrate that you really can't do that. Personal problems will impact your business; conversely, business problems will likely spill over into your personal life. For example, if you're under tremendous stress at work (bad boss, work overload, company being taken over with the likelihood you'll lose your job, etc.), that alone can precipitate back pain, which is notoriously caused by emotional stress.
Understanding that, it seems evident that, as a general rule, we want to handle problems quickly and efficiently as they arise. There are, of course, exceptions. Sometime it's best to put off dealing with a problem. An obvious example: a problematic co-worker or employee who will soon be leaving your company really doesn't need special attention. If you can keep things under wraps for a bit, the problem will soon go away. But such situations are, again, exceptions.
So aggressively attacking problems forthwith would seem to be the default position here. The one caveat to this would be situations where the exact nature and scope of the problem aren't all that evident.
An example here from personal experience: Our firm has been involved in a fairly complex transaction involving various members of the same family, along with their legal representatives. The lawyers, naturally, immediately began issuing directives, some far beyond the scope of their expertise (no surprise, since, after all, they're lawyers!). While our cooperating with the various interests was paramount, I had to insist on taking a step back. It was important that I clearly define the problems that needed solving and the role our firm had to play in the transaction based on the particular expertise we bring to the table. That took both some in depth analysis to break down the transaction into its component parts, along with our clearly communicating our findings to the various parties. That, of course, took some time. But it has proven to be critical to a successful execution of the transaction (still in process). Had we not taken a step back and done the necessary analysis and instead naively followed those initial directives from the attorneys, this thing would inevitably be bolloxed, perhaps beyond repair.
Okay, having considered the caveats and looked at some exceptions to the rule, let's settle on the wisdom of addressing problems swiftly and thoroughly as a general rule. Next time, we'll see not only how that will generally serve us well, but how we can connect this with our spiritual lives.
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