Recently while flying back to Indy from a board meeting I read a quote from Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball. He said his father gave him the following advice, “Most problems, if you ignore them, just go away.” I have been thinking about that quote for a couple of days. At first I thought I agreed with him, then I disagreed and now I think I have settled on “maybe”.
As leaders, volunteers and/or members in our respective organizations we come across problems on a regular basis. I tell my staff that we are 20% proactive and 80% reactive in what we do. Of course after I tell them this I always follow up with the suggestion to imagine what we could do if the ratio was reversed. We have even tried a few times to change our mentality but I think it is human nature to want to fix things.
The “problem” is that all problems are different. The big problems our organizations face like serious injuries, criminal activity, and failing finances to name a few cannot be ignored. In our business we find ourselves unfortunately dealing with some serious things sometimes. These problems need to be addressed immediately. In many cases these can be organization ending problems if they are not fixed. (Not to mention life threatening).
Then there are the “small red flag problems”. These are problems that don’t seem serious but in reality could be a sign of worse things to come. For instance a new member class severely fails in their academics, a couple hundred dollars is unaccounted for in the chapter bank account or a member is seen drinking underage. There may be excuses for each situation and they may not repeat or get worse. Unfortunately there are other possibilities such as hazing is occurring with the new members, a chapter treasurer has found a way to steal money or alcohol is being abused by a member or the group. Left unchecked these can get a lot worse.
Finally we get to the small problems, these are the ones I think we can ignore. I remember a time when someone pranked an AKL Chapter and left a dead deer (roadkill) on their front porch. Instead of simply throwing it in the dumpster and forgetting about it they called the police, they accused other organizations of leaving it there and spent literally 7 days stressing about it. Another small problem is the epic t-shirt problem. Apparently the t-shirts ordered the day before the event won’t get there in time. Instead of shrugging and moving on an organization gripes all day about it ignoring all the other things that could make the event good.
The key is to know what the problem really is. One needs to identify its category. Ask some simple questions like “What are the possible outcomes of this problem?” or “What other things could be related to this problem?” or even “If I shared this problem with someone outside of my organization would they even think it is a problem?”. The answers could be telling and help you figure out if you need to address it or ignore it. If you have some free time try this out on some problems you have recently had and see what you end up deciding.
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