If there is anything you’re guaranteed to be up against in business, it’s problems. So taking any opportunity to look at how you can improve or perfect your hurdle handling skills is critical to the livelihood of your business. The way you listen to, approach, and tackle any situation you face in business is a test of your entrepreneurship. However, this doesn’t mean you should have it all figured out from the offset, some of the best business knowledge we accrue won’t always be from the education we buy or what mentors advise us, it will be from the mistakes we make. But this doesn’t mean we should make every effort to solve issues to the best of our capabilities where possible.

The Full Story

Before jumping in to interrupt your employee about a problem they’ve bought to your attention, actively listen and allow them to express the full situation so that you have the whole picture. This will save attempting to prescribe a solution to a problem that doesn’t fit, and then requiring another remedy (the actual resolution) the problem needed in the first place. 

Ordering Your Priorities

‘ It never rains, but it pours,’

As the saying implies, you should expect not just one problem to trickle along, but a stream of issues to hit you continuously. Adapting this mindset, will over time shield you from feeling disappointed or overly stressed by the many hurdles you are up against. And arranging your business issues in terms of its urgency will potentially prevent your business getting stung by an urgent matter that should have been dealt with sooner. What problems are critical to each company varies, but here are a few examples that probably shouldn’t be ignored;

• When the safety and wellbeing of others is being impaired
• No access to customer data that is essential for transactions with clients (e.g., computer server is down)
• Stolen and/or damaged resources – Burglary, fire, natural disaster
• Serious allegations held against one of your staff by an unhappy customer

Reading through the above will give you an idea of what’s essential to your business depending on its scale and the services/products it offers.

Thinking Outside The Box Can Be Overrated 

When you’re handling a queue of business problems, you don’t have the time to spend thinking of new innovative ways to solve a problem, and so sometimes thinking outside of the box can be overrated. You’re not less of an entrepreneur for using tried and tested processes to get the job done and solved. For instance, a growing supermarket may have an issue with people stealing their shopping carts or the carts being left on the car park obstructing the roads for customers. A tried and tested solution for this is a shopping cart corral to keep the carts together, sheltered, and secure throughout the day and night. The point to make here is, depending on the industry you are in, it’s likely that for some of the problems you are experiencing, there are solutions already available. 

Time is money, and so making business decisions to solve issues quickly and smartly is essential. Your management skills shall define the path and structure of your business solving practices and in turn, determine the success of your business.