Declining Performance – Why we ignore slow changes

Peter Wright

Declining Performance was beautifully demonstrated to me this week. Twice.

Declining Performance

The first was the sad realisation that the Toastmasters club of which I have been a member for seven years had reached the end of its life.

Especially sad because I had been on the executive of the club in various capacities for six of those years.

Woodstock Toastmasters was never a big club compared to many Toastmasters clubs in larger cities. For many years, our membership hovered between 10 and 20 members. Even at the lower end of that range, most meetings would have at least eight members and often a few guests. Meetings were vibrant and enjoyable.

Members drifted away for many reasons; ill-health, moving to distant cities for new jobs, returning to university. Some achieved in a year or two what they wanted and moved on to other interests.

As the club executive, we used a range of tactics to attract new members. Presentations to businesses, educational and community institutions, personal invitation, social media and more.

All our efforts met with limited success. We would gain a new member or two, then lose another the next time membership dues had to be paid.

We kept hoping things would change, we didn’t recognise that at some point, declining performance breaches a threshold from which it is very difficult, perhaps impossible to recover.

For our club, that threshold was probably reached a year before we realised it.

In December we were forced to accept that with only four active members we no longer qualified to continue as a Toastmasters Club. We will have our last meeting on 26 February.

Declining Performance of the senses

Some 30 years ago, I noticed that my hearing was not as sharp as it had been. Higher pitched noises were difficult to hear. At the time in South Africa where I was living, the most common land-line telephone was called the “Cricket” phone because its ringing sound was almost identical to the chirp of the cricket insect. I Often did not hear the phone ringing. I also had more difficulty hearing women’s voices than men’s. That’s dangerous for a married man and a manager of a large mainly female corporate department.

I eventually went to a doctor who looked at my reasonably athletic build, considered my age and said he knew what the problem was.

He didn’t bother to suggest hearing tests.

His very accurate diagnosis was that as I was in my 30s, seemed fit and had lived in Rhodesia or South Africa for most of my life, I would have spent many years in the military as part of my National Service. He asked if I had been in the army and said that the many hours on the rifle range spent firing hundreds of rounds through a variety of weapons, using hand grenades, mortars and being close to explosions had damaged my ears.

At that time, no one used any form of ear protection.

He said he saw hundreds of men my age with the same problem. There was no medical or surgical solution to the declining performance of my hearing.

I could either live with defective hearing or go to a hearing specialist and consider hearing aids.

At the tender young age of 35 or so, there was no way I was going to get hearing aids. They were for old people.

Hearing Aid

The eyes were the next to suffer from declining performance. I had no problem driving or looking at distant objects. In my early 40s, I noticed that I was having difficulty reading the menu in dimly lit restaurants. I also noticed that my eyes did not refocus quickly when looking from the road ahead to the rear view mirrors in my car.

I needed reading glasses. Using glasses just for reading made my life easier and did not compare to the awful idea of hearing aids.

Various upgrades of reading glasses got me through to my late 50s when eventually I had to get bifocals for reading and middle distance. At 67 I still do not need to wear glasses for driving and can comfortably work outdoors without them.

Hearing Aids

I failed to do anything about my hearing. Over the last few years, it has got worse. Unless I faced the person speaking, I missed more words than I heard. Sue complained that I had the TV or radio volume turned too high. Most of the time, I could not hear what my son Bryan, who speaks quietly, was saying.

At meetings, I had to strain to hear the speaker. Any background noise and I was lost.

I went for a hearing test.

The results confirmed that I had a serious loss of hearing and worse, my word recognition was even poorer than my ability to hear sounds.

Yesterday I got my hearing aids.

They are not the top of the range, those cost as much as a reasonable used car and I don’t have medical insurance that would cover the cost. I got a mid-range model.

They are pure magic.

I cannot believe what a difference they have made. As I type this, I can hear the click of the keyboard. If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said that my keyboard was completely silent. When Bryan speaks in his normal voice I think he is shouting.

Why then do we ignore declining performance in our personal lives, our businesses, organisations we belong to? Why do we wait until it’s too late to fix the problem? Why do we waste valuable time making do instead of taking advantage of something that can make a huge difference to our lives?

Inertia, failure to accept the obvious, unrealistic hope, misguided faith and determination are all reasons.

Sometimes we do have to accept the inevitability of life.

The hearing aids taught me an important lesson this week. I wish I had accepted the need for them five or even ten years ago.

What do you think about declining performance? Leave a comment.

Photos from pixabay

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