Someday Never Comes (So Do It Now)

 So today's post is going to be a little bit different.

 And that's because yesterday, I learned that a good friend of mine had passed away.

 Now, this is not unexpected.

She'd been under hospice care and been ill for a long time, but she was married to my brother from another, my best friend, and the 3 of us together, trained for many years in martial arts.

We did workplace violence prevention and personal safety training together. We were pretty inseparable, kind of like what you'd call the 3 musketeers.

 Now, what I wanted to bring to your attention about this process is that someday never comes.

 So that was an old Creedence Clearwater revival song, and it really hits home when you think about it because of all the things that we plan to do at another time when the circumstances are better, when things improve, when you'll be ready for them, the reality is you just are never going to have that situation, so you might as well do those things now.

Get started because when you take that 1st step, you're going to put in motion a better circumstance that makes these things possible.

Back in late 2018, I got the unsettling diagnosis that I had a failing aortic heart valve.

 Now, this wasn't from lifestyle issues. Nothing like that.

 It just turns out I was born with a defective valve. It was malformed when I was in the womb.

Guys tend to have those types of aortic vows fail when they're in their late 50s and that's exactly what happened to me.

Now, what was interesting, is that the initial prognosis was, oh, you don't have to worry about replacing your valve for another 7 to 10 years.

Great!

I can go on living. And worry about it later...much later.

I wasn't having symptoms. I could keep doing my martial arts. 

I was doing that when all of a sudden, I started to develop a few little symptoms. Wonky stuff. 

And the doctors realized that my aortic valve was a whole lot worse than it was thought to be.  As the cardiac surgeon, put it to me. "Don't think you can wait about deciding whether to replace your heart valve for another year because you'll be dead."

Well, now, obviously, I'm here, so I didn't wait, and that's what we're coming back to here is, sometimes we have to make these decisions to do something, even if we don't feel we're ready.

Nobody feels they're ready to have a major procedure done on your heart, but you do it anyhow because the alternative is death, right?

Now, that doesn't mean every decision you have to make, the alternative is death. Obviously it's not.

And to bring this back to investigation, and to workplace violence prevention, and those types of things that I work with businesses and individuals on.

We tend to push off things. And when we do that, they snowball.

I'll give you a great example.

I've talked about it previously, but under California's workplace violence prevention law, you are required to have an effective complaint and investigation process.

If you're like most employers, an allegation is brought forward, but on quick review, it doesn't seem that serious.

So you say to yourself, let's just take a wait and see and see what happens.

And then before you know it, something really serious happens, and you failed to do what you were required to do. As a result, you put your business on the hook potentially for punitive damages.

And you're looking at an issue that could have been stopped and prevented had you only done what you were supposed to do instead of pushing it off the radar until some other day.

So, when we talk about, for example, conducting an effective workplace investigation, when that allegation comes in, you need to make sure that steps are taken to find out what actually occurred, that means interviewing witnesses, that means collecting any other information that's necessary in order to do so.

A lot of times we only want to interview our current employees, but sometimes you need to talk to a former employee, or even someone from outside the workplace in order to get the full picture.

You can't cut corners on this. 

And when I say that, Most of us are aware of the fact that in California, a workplace violence incident is typically treated for its injuries under workers' compensation.

But what happens if you fail to investigate it properly? The situation could have been remedied as you were required to do under the law and you just don't do it?

That can shift it into punitive damages. That can cost you a lot of more money.

It can also be very detrimental to your workplace and to your public reputation in the community and people may decide to take their business elsewhere.

 So, there's no benefit to waiting.

 The time to make your changes, the time to implement things, the time to take that vacation, the time to have a child, the time to get married.

The time is now, not someday.

 So if you're ready to implement an effective investigation process, an effective complaint process, go ahead and schedule a call with me.

One of the most important aspects of the work that I do, and I've trained 100s and 100s of people in this, is how to conduct effective witness interviews.

You can level up your witness interview skills. There's actually processes that help you to do that..

Most people when they get drafted into the business of conducting witness interviews, whether it's for a law firm or an internal workplace investigation.

Let's say you're human resources professional. Most of you are doing this on trial and error and simply hoping for the best.

It doesn't have to be that way because there is an effective proven 6 step process, I know I've used it for 30 years when I conducted over 12,000 witness interviews, that you can implement that can make your witness interviews much more effective, that can provide maximum results so that you are not dealing with the situation where you should have taken steps and you did not take those steps.

So go ahead and schedule a call and let's talk.