Wait for the 'Click' in Your Business

This past spring I was in a tennis drills class that I attended roughly once every two weeks. During the 90 minute workout we typically worked on our forehand, backhand, some net play, and our serve. This part of the class lasted about an hour, the last 30 minutes was reserved for a short singles or doubles match. It is a good work out and I have noticed an improvement in my game as has a friend that I occasionally play with, “You hit the ball harder now” is the way he characterized it.

One aspect of my game that did not improve as much as I would have liked is my serve. I am 6’ 4” tall and so opponents that have not played me before expect a booming serve. I can see a sense of relief when they see me warm up and that my serve is at-best, quite average.

Since joining the instructional class, I reworked my serve and I am in the midst of learning to consistently hit it harder and in the box. There were a number of other people in the group that also worked on their serve with some having had tremendous success. There is one person though who had the worst serve in the group and also worked on his serve the least. I speculate that he basically gave up. The funny part is that he is at the stage where he can have the greatest improvement. The serve just has to click for him. Think about any learned skill and the greatest improvement is typically made at the beginning stage once you breakthrough, once it clicks.

The concept of waiting for something to click is not a new thing. We have all witnessed it in ourselves and in others. My older daughter, now in second grade, started reading while in Kindergarten. It was a very frustrating time for her as well as for my wife and me. If she couldn’t read a word, she would immediately guess or even worse put the book down and quit. This went on for what seemed like an incredibly long time (I speculate it was only a month), and then finally it clicked and she could read. A month later I couldn’t believe how many words she knew and now as she starts the second grade I am blown away with how far she has come along. 

This is not about praising my daughter or the teacher as I know all children go through this process of struggle and then it suddenly clicks when it comes to reading. After it clicks, it’s much easier to make progress. The same thing happened when I taught my daughter to ride her bicycle. Luckily we went through all the ups and downs in one day.

The problem with waiting for something to click is that sometimes without encouragement from others, we do not have the patience, so we give up. Back in the1990’s, when I was learning to snowboard I was very close to quitting after having fallen a number of times and being physically exhausted.  However, a friend who had learned a few years before me gave some great advice, wait until it “clicks” as he went up the lift. Without believing that it would click for me, I might have given up.

What have you tried without having much success, but if it suddenly clicked would create Order of Magnitude Value for you: Hiring/Recruiting? Presenting to Investors? Marketing? Building a Sales Team? Don’t give up, figure out what you need to do to get better and wait for the click!