Excuses are very familiar and they begin to appear harmless, which is one of the reasons they’re so dangerous. Excuses are not real problems; real problems reside beneath the excuses and they are more serious. Excuses are like the tip of an iceberg! For all that we see, there is much more than we don’t see.
An excuse is a safely guarded lie. These innocent looking behaviors are the real poisons in our home, workplace, and society at large. Together, they make up the culture in which excuse making can exist. It is difficult to distinguish between excuses and reasons at times because boundaries are often blended and blurred. The secret to eradicating excuses is to act with foresight rather than hindsight. Keeping in mind that excuse making is a silent killer, and it is a slow-creeping deadly disease, which called excusitis.
As nobody likes to suffer from pain whether it is physical, mental and emotional. In such times, excuses can help a person feel better. This is how human beings use their psychological defense mechanisms against pain. Excuses emerge from the feeling of Not-Okness.
Excuses are the common denominator of every major problem, they make it almost impossible to get the results we are hoping to achieve!. The good news is that excuses can be quantified, measured and eliminated. There are three ways to view the relationships between any two or more things including excuses. The relationship might be causal, it might be coincidental, or it can be mutually coexistent, also known as systemic. Leadership is where all progress begins in eliminating excuse making.
Any plan, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link. The planning process consists of two broad categories: long-term planning and short-term planning. Ownership helps to get rid of excuses. When excuse making reduces by 1%, the progress in results increases by 10%.