Inspiration – Problems & Challenges

 Inspiration – Problems & Challenges

By Nikki Viljoen of Viljoen Consulting (Pty) Ltd

This was submitted to Thought for the Day by Juanita Welgemoed.  “Now is the time to change all your problems into challenges.”

I am sure that I am not the only one, to take some time out now and then, to reflect on what has gone right in my business over the last year and what has gone wrong and why.  Now the things that have gone right and why they have gone right is always a good thing and it is usually quite easy to replicate what you did before for it to happen that way again.

It’s the issues of what went wrong and how to resolve those issues that are always a tad more difficult.

But what if . . .  what if, instead of seeing these issues as problems that we have to agonize over, or beating ourselves up over problems that we don’t seem to be able to resolve, what if we turn them into challenges.  Challenges that can provide us with alternative income streams; or where we collaborate or joint venture with others to use the problem in its alternative form and turn it into a positive.

Think about it for a moment.  Take crime for example – 30 or so years ago, we did not have hi-jackings or armed robberies (well not if you weren’t a bank).  There were very few walls, let alone gates and electric fencing and the like around residential areas and homes.  As the problem of crime became progressively worse (for whatever reason), instead of moaning and griping about how bad the crime was, people started doing things to help themselves and so a problem was turned into a challenge and an opportunity.

Can you imagine the challenges that the first “armed response” company had to face, with no infrastructure in place?  The vehicles, the training of the guards, the control rooms that operate 24/7 and so on – today I am sure that you would agree that it must have been quite a daunting task, but they took the challenge on and they turned it into a positive.

Does that make crime right?  Of course, it doesn’t.  Has crime gone away?  Of course, it hasn’t and the challenges that they face today, I am sure, are of a completely different nature.  Today, 30 years later, the people who chose to bemoan the crime problem are probably still moaning and groaning.  Yes, they have the car alarm, the armed response and alarm contract, the electric fence and everything that goes with it, but it has “cost” them financially and they are still moaning.  Those that turned the problem into a challenge have made money out of it and will continue to do so as they change newly acquired problems into challenges.

The bottom line, of course, is that we can choose to take a problem and look at it, cry about it, talk about it, bang our head against it and perhaps even try and solve it – or we can choose to take that problem and turn it into a challenge or an opportunity.

The choice, as always, is entirely ours.

Nikki is an Internal Auditor and Business Administration Specialist who can be contacted on 083 702 8849 or nikki@viljoenconsulting.co.za or http://www.viljoenconsulting.co.za