Face the Facts

Too often in business the facts are evident to us but we are reluctant to truly examine them and make an informed decision.

The situation that can lead to a crisis is often in evidenced by people not being willing to look at the facts and make a clear decision.  Whilst we don’t know the full outcome of what happened on the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico with BP, from the information that we do have it would appear that there were warning signs that were becoming evident.  We can’t leave it until there is a crisis in our business and armed with hindsight to look at the facts.

So the questions to ask are:

• How much do you really want to know the truth about your company or business even if the news is bad?”
• How often do you challenge yourself or your team by asking what is the worst plausible reality that could become our business?
• Lastly how much true freedom of speech do you encourage?  

My advising you to avoid denial by facing facts is like telling someone to lose weight by eating less (a journey that I have gone on and am continuing to do so).  The statement of losing weight by eating less is obvious but not easily implemented.  What we need to be more aware of is the problem itself, the problem that we could be avoiding facing the facts, or in my instance avoiding facing the fact that I was overweight.

If we are aware of the problem then we can start to deal with it.  We may not solve it at the first instance but at least we can move towards being willing to look at all of the facts.