Spot It.
You start each day with a plan, and by mid-morning it is gone. Urgent problems pile up one after another. You spend the day reacting, and the important work, like planning, growing the business and coaching your people, never gets done.
Sight It.
Constant firefighting usually means the same problems keep coming back because their root causes never get addressed. People bring every problem to you instead of solving it themselves. And there is no protected time for thinking and planning, so the urgent always crowds out the important. In our experience, owners who are good at handling crises can accidentally keep them coming, because rescuing feels productive.
Solve It.
Get ahead of the fires:
- Keep a log of the fires you handle for two weeks.
- Group them by type and find the most common ones.
- Fix the cause of the top one.
- Block time on your calendar each week for planning, and protect it.
- Coach your team to bring a suggested solution along with every problem.
Fewer fires leave room to build the business.
Fixed it yourself? Great. Want help making it stick? Talk to a Troubleshooter.