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.
