This blog entry is about the verb “tackle”. We often use this word in business situations when we want to talk about starting to deal with a problem at work. Let me give you some examples of how to use it.
We’re having a big problem with the employees over the issue of vacation time. How do you think we should tackle this problem?
People are constantly late for work, and the boss said he would tackle the problem himself. I wonder what he’s going to do.
I’ll tackle the problem of low morale at the office if you deal with the customer complaints we’ve been getting recently.
Our sales have been going down steadily since January. If we don’t tackle this problem soon, we’ll go out of business.
It’s important to note that when we say we will tackle a problem, it means we haven’t started to deal with that problem yet. If the process has already started, then we say we’re handling the problem or dealing with the problem.
You might be interested to know that we can also use the word “tackle” when talking about American football. When a football player attacks a player from the opposite team in order to stop him from running with the football, we say he “tackles” him. So I suppose that’s why we use it when talking about problems; we are attacking a problem in order to stop it.
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