When to throw lit matches at gasoline

We all spend so much time chasing urgent issues.  The name for it is “putting out fires” in some circles. It seems the better we do, the more fires we have to put out.

How do we get around that and still grow?

We suggest triaging sessions each week. Take your main issues and discuss status and next step. Triaging involves making one of three choices about an item.

1. Do we kill it?

2. Do we spend time saving it?

3. Do we pour gasoline on it and throw lit matches at it?

Spending time on business strategy items every week is how you create more and more items that you want to pour gasoline on. You have to plan to do that and even, intend to do that.

Its a mind shift to say that each and every week we will be spending time working on things that don’t show up as success for a few weeks or more from now. How to sustain will be talked about in another blog post. You first have to commit to being strategic.

Being strategic is the only sustainable way to build your business over time. Most business owners are too busy being “in” the business to work “on” the business. Working on instigating strategic business initiatives is the key to survival.

Start a few fires while you put the nasty ones out.

Starting the right fires is how you create your world.