Do you feel like you’re experiencing the same problem over and over again?  Do you tell yourself that if you can just get past or through this one issue, and then everything will be ok. But if you haven’t changed anything, the problem will repeat itself, again and again. That’s why solving problems early is so powerful.

Psychologists have a fancy name for ignoring evidence. It’s called confirmation bias. It dates back to the 1960s. People put more weight on evidence that supports what they already believe. It’s even built into google – search up ‘are cats better than dogs’ – you’ll get what you’re looking for. Write the question the other way – ‘are dogs better than cats’ – you’ll get a different answer!

Feather, Brick or Truck

Have you heard the analogy of the feather, brick, or truck, when it comes to solving problems early? The first warning we receive is a feather … light, and easy to miss. The next one is a brick – much harder to miss and more painful, and if we ignore that, we get hit by a truck.

I only heard this feather, brick, truck metaphor a few days ago, but it has stuck with me. It applies in so many places. Like health, with niggles that become injuries and worse. But I was thinking about some more challenging situations like our own behaviour and boundaries.

Feather

Here the feather might be when someone in your team does something that isn’t really ok – nothing major, just a little off. You should have a chat with them, but you’re busy, you rush off to the next meeting. Then before you know it the day’s over and it feels a bit weird to bring it up. They’re a good person – you’re pretty sure it’ll be ok.

Brick

A few weeks later, you hear about something they did that was similar, maybe a little worse. Someone else was impacted. You really should have said something before. You need to find out what happened. Then you need to have a chat with the people who saw it happen to get more info so you can work out what to do. You’re busy, they’re busy. You have your next 1:1 with them in a fortnight – it will have to be then. You think, ‘I need to sort this out, but – I’m sure it’s no big deal’.

Truck

Then you’re hiring internally for a role in your team, and the person you really want to join your team says they’re not interested – citing team culture. Yikes. That’s the truck. Now you’ve got a much bigger problem – the initial behaviour, at least another person who’s been impacted and now the work and productivity of the whole team. It’s going to take you a lot of time to sort this out. All because you didn’t deal with the feather. Suddenly, solving problems early seems like a great idea.

Find that Problem and Fix it

Problems are so much easier to solve when they first appear. Toyota’s quality system is famous for stopping the production line to fix issues as soon as they are spotted. There’s a rule in software development that an issue gets 10 times harder to solve for every phase it progress there from design to development to test to live. You need to look out for those feathers and deal with them before their bricks. You need to need to be brave enough to have that conversation up front. Whether it is calling out something that’s not ok, or just saying no to something that’s not a priority. Solving problems early helps stop feathers coming back as trucks.

What feathers do you need to pay more attention to?

Want some help with deal with tough situations, check out my free Bravery Beginning course here.

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