At the Gartner CRM conference I attended recently (see my posts here), an analyst listed five key points about metrics. One point was “Impatience,” or as he described it, “overreacting to blips.” What he meant by this was that too often as human beings we react to a single point of information or feedback, rather than waiting to see if the single point of data is part of a trend, or just a “one-off.” This is what he meant by “patience.” You have to be patient to see if the data you’re receiving now is consistent or just an anomoly.
I wrote about a similar phenomenon in this post on managing to the exception. The concept is the same: we need to have a preponderance of evidence in order to change how we do things, rather than basing it on onesie-twosie feedback.
Ask yourself how many times your association has changed its policies or practices based on the feedback of a single member (usually a board member).
The same concept can be applied to our personal lives as well. When you get single feedback on something, do you immediately change your behavior based on that feedback? Or do you wait to get more feedback, to ensure (or reject) the validity of the initial feedback?
Have patience. Don’t overreact to the blips.