The last couple of days have been extremely frustrating, difficult and depressing me personally. Our daughter had her appendix ruptured, she is still in the hospital and really sick. I am praying every single minute for her to get well soon. This whole thing could have been avoided if only the Health care system in Iceland had listened to their customer… us Parents. We have been going to them for over 2 weeks since my daughter first had fever and complained about a pain in her abdomen. For 2 weeks we went to the Childrens hospital asking them to take her symptoms seriously, they kept saying there was nothing showing up. Last friday, it became really serious and of course we found out that her appendix has ruptured and the inflection has spread. She is in the hospital being pumped with double dosage of antibiotics, painkiller and every possible drug. It hurts me to write this. If only the doctors had admitted her after our 3rd visit and did some clinical tests, maybe we could have prevented this.
The reason I write about this at a time which is personally difficult for us is the fact that I see the same symptom with many of the startup teams and founders I work with. They just get into this mode of not taking action when all the data points to a bad news whether your Product/Market fit is not working or if you get bad vibes from an employee or if you feel like a potential customer who has been working with you slowly starts to not pay as much attention to you. I remind founders who I work with that Bad news is bad news, deal with it right away. Bad news never gets good with time, procrastinating about it and in-action are the worst things you could do. I have written before that Time is the most valuable resource and in-decision and analysis paralysis just wastes your most valuable resource.
The moral of this post is be biased towards decisions and action even if it leads to wrong results, because once you do that you know what to do to change. I believe very strongly in taking decisions, don’t postpone taking decisions even under uncertain conditions or wrong data. Make a choice, move forward. Bring a sense of urgency to move towards your goal, whatever may that be whether it is Product/Market fit, Revenue Scaling or International Growth. Take decisions to know if you are moving towards that goal. If you are caught in an analysis paralysis, just stop and take a decision. It could possibly save your startup.
Dear Bala
Sorry to hear about your daughter and hope she recovers soon.
Sounds like you just caught it in time before perionitis set in and the appendix burst !
cheers
Micky Allen
Hi Bala.
We’re so sorry to hear about Mira’s health battle, which sounds pretty unnecessary. I guess my guess diagnosis last Tues was sadly right!
So…we’re thinking of her and hope for a speedy recovery. Keep strong for her!
Best,
Ray, Silla and Jon William (who sends his best to Mira)
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2015 15:30:22 +0000 To: rrsnider@hotmail.com
Thank you for this reminder to be decisive, and I hope for your daughters fast recovery, I had a similar experience and am now a parent who drives her son crazy asking about his health. I should do the same with my business.
Best wishes, Catherine.
Dear Bala, prayers being sent for Mira and your whole family. Having our children ill is so much more worse than being ill ourselves, I can only imagine what you are all going through right now. Please keep us posted on how she is doing.
Thanks for taking the time during this family crisis to help me and the rest of the StartUp community to take action and make decisions instead of sticking our heads in the sand when problems arise.
LoVe Pauline