Head In The Sand
An ostrich with his head in the sand is one of those delightful metaphors that create a vivid mental picture depicting someone deliberately avoiding a situation or information. Collins Dictionary defines it “to deliberately refuse to accept the truth about something unpleasant.” with the encouragement not to “be an ostrich and bury your head in the sand, hoping your problems will disappear.”
There are multiple reasons why people avoid difficult parts of business. We have covered a number of them and wrap up looking at a ‘lack of awareness’. Sometimes as business owners and managers you can deliberately avoid information you know you should be paying more attention to. It might be a downward trend in incoming leads, a team member whose work is not quite up to standard, a machine that sounds like it needs a service. Like a slow puncture on a car, you can still get around and manage but it gets harder and inevitably you will come to a standstill, often at a most inconvenient time. Sometimes it is a lack of skills and/or systems that leads to you being unaware of an impending problem. Maybe you do not measure incoming leads, or have stopped checking the time your team arrives or are so used to the ‘odd’ noise on your machine you don’t know it is an early warning sound. Whatever the reason, a lack of awareness is one of the more insidious mistakes to avoid.
One of the most effective ways to overcome a lack of awareness in your business is to build a strong sense of trust amongst your team. When people feel free to raise issues as they see them and, ideally, bring suggestions on how the best way would be to address those, you create a sense of ownership and community. It is often said being at the top is lonely and there are certainly times in the life of a manager and business owner where the ‘buck stops with you’ and you have to make a big call. It is a lot more lonely in the role if you assume all responsibility for being aware of all the needs and potential problems all of the time. Not only is that lonely, it is exhausting. Leverage your team. They are closer to many parts of your business than you are. They will see things sooner. They will know what fixed looks like and, often, how to get there.
When was the last time you had a team member point out a problem or area for improvement? Do you feel responsible for seeing and fixing all the things that can and do go wrong? How long before you are aware there is a problem or opportunity? Answering these questions honestly will be a great gauge to whether you might have your head buried in the proverbial sand!
(And no, Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand, they rotate their eggs in their nest so that it looks like their heads are buried in the sand.)
