Backdraft was a cool movie. Ladder 49 was pretty cool as well. Heck, being a firefighter might actually be neat…
Maybe you already are a firefighter and you just don’t know it. Curious? Read on…
Do you spend more time during the course of your day putting out fires than anything else? Do you find yourself in reaction mode all the time?
If so, then the order of the day is: becoming proactive. (if you said no, then I think you nose might have grown an inch or two)
Surprisingly few people in the world are truly proactive. Few people plan ahead and put themselves in a position to accomplish what they need to do.
Most people are reactive, living in a constant state of having decisions made for them and being ordered to and fro. This translates over to the entrepreneurial realm as well. Many entrepreneurs and small business owners are constantly in ‘fire-fighter’ mode. Everything is an emergency. All the plates are spinning at 9,000 RPM.
How can you slow the plates (or even set a few of them down)?
It’s not an easy transition. Something in the human psyche love martyrdom. We love to be exasperated fighting the good fight. We love to one-up others’ stories of plight and hard dealings with our own (think about the last conversation you had with somebody…did you say something and then, immediately after you were done hear them say “well, if you think that’s bad, listen to what happened to me…). It’s no surprise, then, that people like to be constantly running around at mach 3 with their hair on fire. It seems that most business owners are quite content to run around without any real method to their madness.
The reactive entrepreneur is always putting out fires. They always have some problem they are dealing with, some distraction from the main focus of their business.
This commercial is a perfect example of what the life of a reactive entrepreneur is like:
The proactive entrepreneur, on the other hand, is almost always in control. They don’t operate from a permanent residence in crisis-ville.
How can you move from reactive to proactive? It will vary. For some, it will require a complete re-wiring of their brains and a complete change in their lifestyle. For others, it will be some simple changes in thought process and planning.
Some business models are set up to induce chaos for the owner. The owner is the centerpiece of everything and every decision hinges on them. This is a mistake. In other instances, ‘control-freakism’ on behalf of the owner is responsible for the owner not being able to escape any minute decision - critical mission failure again.
If you really want to stop putting out fires everyday, you have to:
a. Plan - clear up objectives and priorities
b. Simplify - eliminate, reduce and retread
c. Delegate - get rid of all the crap work you find yourself doing on a daily basis
It takes a while to reverse the chaotic inertia. When people are paralyzed relying on your decisions, when you don’t have simple and clear objectives, when you don’t plan your next moves you won’t be able to put out the fires - you’ll just keep running around with a fire extinguisher until you collapse from exhaustion. Then, you’ll get up, repeat the process again - unless you makes some simple changes.
If you work for the fire department, well, please keep doing a good job.
Hi Adam~
Great posting today. I know all of us see reactive-types everyday. When I was in ‘Corporate America’, I would come across many employees that were anxious to brag about how late they worked or how they worked all weekend because they were ’so busy’. I was not always impressed since I recognized in many cases they were trying to use activity as a surrogate for results. Now, as an entrepreneur I try to always remember the importance of ‘plan & do’, not just ’stay busy’. In the end, we all want better results and more activity many not get us there.
John Rohrbeck
John,
Thanks for the comment. You are right on the money. When I worked in corporate America, I think most of the people were busy for the sake of busy-ness.
Your plan & do approach is something a lot of entrepreneurs should take under serious consideration.
Best,
AJD
Adam,
great post - and oh-so-true. Greetings from Corporate America. Unfortunately I predict it will get even worse in the aspect of being in the “fire fighting business”.
The deep cuts in personnel in certain industries will lead to absolute work-overload of a few people - and the biggest crisis will get the most attention. And in turn the necessary groundwork of (new) projects will be more and more sparse which then will lead to more fires in later stages.
At one point in time at my work place an expression was created for this type busy-ness: “shooting alligators”. Imagine yourself on a tiny platform surrounded by 1000s of alligators who are trying to get you. Since you can’t shoot them all, you will pick the one that comes the closest and is the biggest.
So, have you been shooting alligators this week? Unfortunately my personal answer would be yes - despite planning and trying to avoid this exact scenario.
I will try to do better next week and I guess we’ll see how that works - although I can see the alligators closing in already…
Barbara
Barbara,
Thanks for the awesome comment. I have never heard of “shooting alligators” but I will be sure to use that one in an upcoming post (as well as the office!)
Great point about the ‘right-sizing’ and work-overload in corporate America. I think you are spot on about this and I experienced this first hand when I was crunching numbers in a cubicle. It seems that most of corporate management has no clue how to manage workload. AS the proverb goes - the $%#! rolls downhill.
I’m pretty sure that you’ll clip a few alligators as you make your escape from the corporate world!
Best,
Adam
So pleased to read such a interesting article that does not fall back on cheap rhetoric to get the point across. Thank you for an enjoyable read.