“Expect the unexpected.” That’s what people always say whenever an unforeseen event happens.
No matter how much you prepare, one way or another, something unexpected will happen. It’s something that will cause you to make changes on your plans and schedules.
So how do you deal with the changes that come after an unexpected event?
Here are some tips that will help you regroup your thoughts and get on with your work.
Keep Calm
The first thing to do when something unexpected happens is to get away from it. Take five minutes or so to just breathe and clear your head. A clearer mind will help you to make better decisions on what you can do next.
Taking some time off is better than reacting immediately to an unforeseen event and regretting it afterwards. However, don’t take too long or you’ll risk delaying everything else in your work. Just enough time to calm down and to have a better perspective of the issue at hand.
Don’t Aim for Perfection
Whenever something unforeseen happens, we tend to panic and try to make everything “perfect” just to make us feel that we didn’t miss anything and to give ourselves some assurance that everything is okay.
But “perfection is for kindergartners”. (No offense to kindergartners out there.) What this means is you don’t have to spend so much time to make every minor detail perfect. Kindergartners have all the time in the world to do a task, unfortunately the rest of us are a tad more time poor.
You’ll try to make everything flawless and end up running out of time, not finishing what’s important.
Don’t aim for perfection, aim for progress. Do what you need to do well to get things going. Don’t waste time and energy nitpicking the small details.
Keep Your Eyes on the Goal
We can never really have a plan set on stone. But what matters is that no matter how much tweaking your plan takes, your goal is still the same… like finishing a quality project on time.
Regardless what happens, it is still your duty to provide your customer with good service and a quality outcome. Giving the quality outcome even though there were unexpected issues, will make you look professional in your customer’s’ eyes.
Communicate with Your Team
You’ve probably heard of this before, but don’t “take it all by yourself.”
Talk to your team about what you can do to get over an unexpected event. Hiding issues like these will only cause more problems or surprises on your business as a whole.
If the unexpected issue is caused by a team member, talk to them professionally.
Don’t go blaming and taking out your anger on them. Let them tell you what happened from their perspective. Hear them out first before you start asking them further questions.
Remember, you are a team. And only those team that work together can get to their goal.
Changes and surprises are inevitable. Becoming frustrated over it will not help you in any way and it will more than likely give you more problems instead. So aim for progress rather perfection, and remember, stay calm and keep moving forward.
