Act Now … Apologize Later

Kekich Credo #81 - The best way to get started is to get started. Life rewards action… not reaction. Wait for nothing. Attack life. Don’t plan to death or ask for permission… but act now… and apologize later.

Act now … apologize later.  It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission is a quote from the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.  Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and a U.S. Naval Officer.  She helped develop COBOL which was one of the first high-level programming languages and she invented the first compiler which is a program that translates programming code to machine language.

It is better to act decisively and apologize for it later than to seek approval to act and risk delay and objections. Sometimes when you want to move in a direction and you try to get permission to do so, someone else won’t even consider it and nothing gets done.  Doing first, and apologizing later can bring the other person around to your idea.  

When you ask others for permission, you want them to have a say in what’s going on but more often you might be putting them in a difficult position.  If things go wrong, they would be responsible because they granted permission. So stop asking for permission and just do it. 

How can you stop asking for permission?  Get in the habit of giving yourself permission first.  Ask yourself what it is you want from a given situation.  

Here are some questions Barbara Mann suggests you should ask yourself before taking action, in her blog called Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Charging Ahead.

Ask yourself if what you want to do is ethical and fair? Always make sure every decision and action you take are ethical and fair to everyone. When your ethics are questioned, trust is diminished and hard to return.  

The second question to ask yourself is what are the pros and cons?  An innovator will assess all the pros and cons.  When assessing the pros, you need to be thinking about the improvement your decisions and actions will bring to the process, your customers, and how it would make life easier. Your thoughts should be about simplifying the process, streamlining tasks and creating efficiencies for all.  When assessing a con, it may be that  there are duplicate efforts which may mean reassigning tasks amongst your team. You need to be thinking about the intended and unintended consequences and be ready to have the answers when you are asked about your actions.  

Who will be impacted?  If a decision is made that positively impacts one person but adversely impacts another, you might need to reconsider your decision or actions. 

Does this adhere to regulatory compliance? You need to know the regulations or at least find out to ensure compliance. Choosing to ignore them could lead to poor decisions.  

Finally ask yourself, Does this decision feel right or wrong? When you ask yourself this question without asking for permission, you can feel if it’s right or wrong.  If it feels right, it is a go and if it feels wrong, you should hold off.  When in doubt, stay out!

If you ask yourself these questions, you will make the right decisions most of the time.  It is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.  So the best way to get started is to get started.  

# living life abundantly    # published author    # travelling tuesdays