BRX Pro Tip: Less Complaining, More Improving
Stone Payton : Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I’m guilty of it just like anybody else, but I find myself and I’m a little more forgiving of myself than I am of others, but I find others just from time to time just complaining instead of doing.
Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think that right now it seems like we’re in an era where there’s a lot of complaining, whether it’s online, people complaining, or second-guessing, and that’s just not helpful. I mean, pointing out problems is easy. Try to come with some solutions. That’s harder.
Lee Kantor: So, I think that if everybody just spent a little less time complaining and more time improving, I think that in business, especially, you’re going to have a better performance and you’re going to have that continuous improvement that you need in order to grow an organization.
Lee Kantor: I think successful companies treat any type of complaint as just data. This is just raw data that you can then take and move it into some sort of problem-solving and then use it as an opportunity to test some changes that might improve your process, or it might improve your service. And that if you do it right, it will definitely improve your profits over time.
Lee Kantor: So, when something’s not working in your team or your operation, just stop the venting. Stop the complaining. Define the problem and then ask, “What is one improvement we can test that can make this problem go away?”
Lee Kantor: I mean, if you look at a complaint as an opportunity to improve, you’re going to have more solutions, and you’re going to have better systems and better processes and a better end product for your clients.
Lee Kantor: And this level of continuous improvement should be part of your culture. This has to be the mindset that you want your team members to have. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s not okay to make the same mistakes over and over again, and have people just getting frustrated and resentful.
Lee Kantor: You want them to be able to see a problem, understand, “Hey, this is not great. There has to be a better way. Let’s figure out a better way.” And then, make these kinds of frequent incremental upgrades, instead of just being stuck in that state of frustration.
Lee Kantor: And leaders can really model this if they kind of move the conversations from blame to ownership. What is in our control here? What can we experiment with in order to fix this? This changes the culture from this kind of passive complaining to an active, measurable progress that’s going to compound over time. So less complaining, more improving.
