Why There Is Always An Excuse And How To Curb It

This happened with me in past and I am sure this might have happened with you at some point in your life. We always have an alibi or an excuse for everything. Yes by everything I mean any responsibility that has been given to us; we have an excuse for it. There are things that we need to do in our life and there is no way we can escape them. And this process makes us devise ways to have an excuse for them. Somewhere something is not happening as per our wishes and we are expected to comply that brings out the human tendency to either do it forcibly or bring out an excuse to escape its brunt.

This article doesn’t relate to children or our home situation but I am specifically talking about excuses we hear in our corporate life. We assign work to someone and instead of deliverable we hear an excuse for it. So let’s talk a bit deeply about it and get some more in-depth insight and possible solution to curb this behavior.

It happens many times

1) That you have given work to someone

2) You have assigned a responsibility

3) You are expecting a certain out come

But On the D-day when you approach the person

1) You find that the work has not been done

2) That person has not performed in certain manner you had expected

3) The person has not given out something which was part of their deliverable

And when the conversation happen all you hear is an EXCUSE

It puts you in a bad shape personally because

1) You had expected something

2) You had scheduled your stuff keeping in mind the outcome

3) You had future plans based on it

So what the person who has given an excuse has done is that instead of focusing on Work he has

1) Focused on Not doing it

2) Focused on Why It cannot be done

3) Focused on factors that will not make that work happen

And apart from himself he drags you too in his story and expects that

1) You would buy the story

2) You would be concerned and comply with him

3) You would understand the situation in hand

Well in reality what happens is that

1) The direction of discussion changes

2) Work gets suffered

3) Inadvertently everyone involved gets fooled.

This happens in many organizations and knowingly or unknowingly many people become victims of it.

The habit of not doing today but having an excuse makes you busy all the time not only with piled up work but thinking about the ways that are good enough to postpone it.

My personal opinion on this is simple.

1) If work has to be done it has to be done

2) If problems are there it should have been told in advance

3) The end date means the end date and there is no compromise to that

Once everyone there is strict end date —-THINGS HAPPEN

Yes, it is human mentality to

1) Go in comfort zone

2) Look for ways to escape work

3) Look for ideas to postpone it

But that all happens till the time you let it happen from your end or an organization lets its employees do that.

If clearly this is happening around you then problem is either with culture or the person who is doing it. Yes, there can be reasons but then there are ways to get around the reasons.

Either eliminate the habit or eliminate the people, whatever seems most suitable. The former is always better because people do change and behave in certain desired way if things get properly handled.

Time is precious. A delay pushes us back by weeks and months. It is important for us to respect time of our and others and the time would start to respect us as a successful organization in future.

Go Kill It