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You just knew there would be some sort of post about golf this morning. After all, PGA Championship, the season’s final major finished up yesterday and of course I watched almost every minute. I took a few things away from watching over the last four days. It would be fun to write about Tiger‘s troubles (I always wanted to play like him and after watching him hitting into the trees, the sand, and the water, I think I can!) but I think I’ll save that post. Instead, I want to write about a decision another golfer made that illustrates a great business point.
There’s an old golf expression: take your medicine. It’s used when you’ve hit the ball into some sort of trouble – behind a tree or into a deep bunker. It means that when you get into trouble, get out of the trouble, not into more bad stuff or a worse situation. Too often, our mindset is to try to make a superhuman, once in a lifetime shot and when we fail, we turn one extra stroke into three or four.
We saw this with young Rory McIlroy. His ball came to rest just behind a tree root which impeded his follow-through. Instead of chipping out sideways and trying to salvage the hole from there, he thought he could hit the shot cleanly (he could) and let go of the club before he hit the root (he couldn’t). He hurt his wrist, which for a golfer can be a lingering or maybe even career ending injury.
The business point is the same. It’s not that we and our businesses don’t ever get into trouble. The problem is that often we don’t look for ways out that minimize the damage. Instead, we try to hit big shot. We gamble and make a bad situation a lot worse by throwing good money after bad instead of cutting our losses or attempting to do things which have a low percentage chance of succeeding while ignoring the safe solution that might cause short-term pain but will be a relatively minor hit in the scheme of things.
That doesn’t mean we need to be passive – I’ve seen some really creative, relatively safe shots when people are in trouble. You and your business can do the same. Taking your medicine might not be very appealing but neither is having to withdraw due to an inability to continue.
Consult Keith 