During the Christmas vacation the moles have come to live in my horses’s field. Every day I go up there and more mole hills have appeared. At times it seems like they are invading the field!
And their presence has reminded me of a game I used to play when I was growing up called Whac-a-Mole. The aim of the game was it hit the lights on the board every time they lit up and each time you did this successfully you scored points. And whilst this was great fun it never really solved the under-lying problem as the moles were still there in the background.
And this got me thinking about business. How often are you playing Whac-A-Mole in your business? Dealing with all the incidents that rear their ugly head and are front and foremost in your mind, rather than looking at the under-lying problem that is causing this.
After all the mole hills are a result of a mole infestation. Just whacking the mole hills has not addressed the problem of the moles living under the field in the first place. How often in business do we just focus on treating the symptom (in this case the mole hills) rather than the symptom (the real reason the moles have come to live in the field).
When I look at my business and that of my clients I often see this. The business issues that take all our time and attention are the ones that are front of mind and all too often we invest valuable resources attempting to solve them, rather than looking at what caused the issue in the first place.
Often when I speak with business leaders they bemoan the fact that their team members are not pulling their weight and are not operating productively. They try to solve this problem through team building events when actually the underpinning problem is that the team members are not engaged and the business culture is not supporting the team members to grow and contribute.
So what business issues are you playing whac-a-mole with? What can you do to really understand what the underlying cause of the problem is and then go about “treating” this rather than the symptom.
And if employee engagement is the real challenge in your business right now, why not grab yourself free access to this newly released video book, which contains ten lessons on how to improve employee engagement. You can get yourself a copy by signing up at https://www.engageandgrow.com.au/video-course/. If you use the code JF2 to access this Videobook course for FREE! (for a limited time).
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
