Prevention is better than cure.
-Erasmus
There was a phrase that my mom would say at the end of some sentences that would instantly tell you I was in trouble. Anything she said that ended with, "…in the first place!", was a clear indication that I was learning something the hard way. These telling sentences started with something like, 'if you had only listened to me', or 'had you just done what I asked you to do', and my all time favorite, 'you wouldn't be in this mess'. So had I listened, done what she asked, or had the gift of foresight like she had, does this mean my childhood would have been painless? Of course not. I definitely could have avoided the sting of some growing pains however. Erasmus points out that preventing something from happening in the first place is better than trying to figure out how to fix it. When my mom was addressing my burn wound because I touched a hot pot on the stove, she was lecturing, "…this wouldn't have happened if you stayed out of the kitchen in the first place!". While she was driving me to the hospital to get stitches in my head, in her best comfort voice she was still yelling, "… we wouldn't be going to the doctor if you had stayed out of the garage like I asked you to in the first place!". And so the story goes, I was more interested in the cure than the prevention of pain.
My challenge to you this week is to become more curious about prevention than cure. As leaders we are constantly challenged to design alternative plans if our original ideas falls short. We spend incredible amounts of time and energy diagnosing what went wrong and less time discussing what went right. Imagine the strength of our leadership and influence if we were able to anticipate the needs of our customers and employees from the very beginning rather than after they've pointed out a disconnect. There will be plenty of people out there focused on the cure. Cures are important, no doubt about it. Pharmaceutical commercials are in the business of the cure. They have a pill for everything that’s wrong. The problem is I'm still holding my breath for the commercials that tell you how to prevent needing to take the pill in the first place! No surprise here, the commercials I'm waiting for, just like the leadership I'm working on, starts with my own accountability.
Alonzo Kelly
President
Milwaukee Urban League Young Professionals
