Skip to main content

Solving Your Problems at Work in a very SAD Way

Often in my training courses, my participants would like to share with me their problems at work and ask me for advise.

The advise I gave them is to solve problems in a 3-Step SAD way: 

Step 1: See the problem as what it is, not what you wish

Reason is that if you don’t exactly see what the problem is, you're going to perpetuate it.  You are already in reality, all you need to do is to see it.

All problems at work, be it sales, cash flow or people management, can be summed up in two words: Human Problems. Settle the human problems and you'll settle all problems. 

Human problems can be in the area of motivation, morale, competencies, distraction, complacency, leadership, communication, inter-personal skills, teamwork and compliance. 

Step 2: You don’t lack ideas, strategies or solutions to your problems. So stop blocking yourself and attend to what’s going on.  

When you really attend to the problems, the solution is obvious.  For example, my client felt that his staff are not driven to close all sales, and the company often lose business to competitors.  Once he see the problem being the sales incentive system, the staff immediately will be motivated to do more sales. 

Step 3: Start Doing NOW.  Never wait for a perfect solution.  Instead start doing now and you'll correct along the way. 

In short, you can solve all problems at work in a very SAD Way: SEE ATTEND DO. 

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer at Asia Trainers. Andy's courses on management, sales and executive skills have helped over 81,131 people in 13 countries.  Contact him at andy@asiacoachingtraining or call him at 8201-4347 today. Full course listing is at here

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What an Executive Coach and Business Coach Does

The Secret Under the Mattress: Why would a 79-year Man Bet So Big on 4D?

It was 2007 when we discovered his secret. While moving my father’s mattress, we found them: heaps and heaps of Singapore Pools 4D tickets. They were stacked in layers, a paper trail of lost hopes. What shocked us most wasn’t just the volume, but the stakes. He wasn’t betting a few dollars for fun. He was punting hundreds of dollars per draw—nearly ten times a month. At the time, my siblings and I were furious. Our father was a 79-year-old retiree. We wondered, with a mix of anger and confusion, why a man at his stage of life would need to win such "big money." What was he going to do with the money? We saw it as a reckless habit, a sign of poor judgment in his final years.  Some of us would say, "If I were to give him money to buy 4D, why don't I use the money and buy 4D myself?  At least I have better discipline".  It has taken me two decades, and the experience of raising my own three grown-up children, to finally see the truth that was hidden under that matt...

Head Bleeding when the Chair Falls

The Weight of Silence: What Were We Really Arguing About? My earliest memories are punctuated by the sound of shouting. In 1970, when I was barely 6 years old, I stood as a small witness to the fierce quarrels between my father and my late eldest brother Kah Yang (he passed away in 1971 at the age of 17). As I grew up, these contradictions became the soundtrack of our lives, usually centered around our family's shoe shop and clothing stalls in Chinatown. In the court of family opinion, the verdict was almost always the same: my father was "wrong." He was judged as a man who didn't fulfill his role, who wasn't "burdening" enough for the family’s success. But as I look back from the vantage point of 2026, I have to ask: Was that actually true? Let me finally put to rest what my father did right: the truths that were buried under decades of criticism: Unseen Labor: He worked grueling, long hours. I remember him hauling boxes of goods and equipment to set u...