89. If you sense trouble, do something.

Even small misunderstandings can snowball into conflicts. It’s up to you not to let these snowballs turn into avalanches.

Recently, an IT executive was asked to build a program to support one of his company’s departments. Even after a number of meetings, he’d made no progress with the program. People were getting frustrated. The company’s president sensed something was amiss. He assumed someone would bring it to his attention if the issue was important enough. Instead it bubbled beneath the surface, distracting the entire team for months.

In the meantime, the company experienced a leadership transition. When the new president sensed a problem, she brought in the IT exec to get a status report. When the IT exec admitted he had no idea where things stood, the new president talked to a few team members. She discovered that they were furious and resentful about the lack of leadership. She immediately clarified roles and responsibilities without assigning any blame, defined how the project’s success would be measured, and established biweekly reporting sessions about the project. She turned things around quickly, but the company had already lost six months of time to rambling meetings and unabated watercooler rantings. If you were to calculate the lost productivity, it would easily top $100,000, and all because no one stepped up to solve the problem.

The minute you see confusion or conflict about to snowball into something bigger, face it head-on. Avoid blaming and finger-pointing, which only make things worse. Problems rarely resolve themselves. Until someone stops them, they only get bigger.