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Phrase: Get out in front of (an issue)
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Your ability to get out in front of a problem depends on whether you are a proactive pre-crastinator or a reactive procrastinator.
What the heck does that mean, you may be thinking.
If you get out in front of a problem, you can prevent it from occurring or are the first to deal with it before others or your competitors do.
A perfect example of getting out in front of a problem is the Nihon University football scandal of 2018.
The football team coach told one of his players to injure the opposing Kwansei Gakuin team’s quarterback intentionally.
The player hit the quarterback with a late tackle that injured a knee and damaged ligaments near his spine.
That’s the scandal, and it caused a big stink.
Of course, both the Nihon University coach and the player were in the wrong.
They took different approaches to the situation, however.
The player got out in front of the situation by publically admitting his guilt, apologizing to the player he injured, the opposing team, all his teammates and everyone associated with the game of football.
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The coach denied everything over and over again.
In contrast, the player got out in front of the situation, the coach sunk deeper and deeper.
The Nihon University player even met face-to-face with the young man he injured.
The coach was forced to quit, and the team was banned from playing for the remainder of the year.
By getting out in front of the issue, the Nihon University player was forgiven by the person he injured and Japanese society.
The coach was vilified in the press and community.
The moral of the story is if you get out in front of a problem, there’s a better chance it will work out in your favour.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 64.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.