What are you feeling right now? Are you panicked? Filled with anxiety? Working every hour of the day and night to keep your business afloat?
As the leader of your business, your behavior sets the tone for the culture and behavior of everyone else in the business.
As I came on watch, the last of the light of the day faded. Everyone else was settling down in the sailboat for the night. I was alone at the wheel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, responsible for keeping the boat on track and everyone safe for my three-hour watch. Turning around to look behind the boat, I saw a slightly darker cloud approaching. I knew that could only mean a squall was coming with lots more wind. It was time to roll in some of the sails so that we would still be in control when the squall hit.
It’s Monday morning. The phone is ringing off the hook, your In Box is overflowing. There is a lineup at your door. You are an entrepreneur starved for time.
You have a limited amount of time to work on our business. While it may not feel like it today, you do have choice about how you spend your time. You can continue on your well worn path or make a right turn in a new direction. Use these ideas to get out of firefighting mode to take back control of your time.
Everyone around the table looked at each other. There was silence in the room. This was the third time they had met off site as a team to do their strategic planning for the business. Their coach had just asked how they had done on their five goals for the quarter. No one, including the CEO, was willing to own up until Don, one of the young up and coming members of the leadership team, said “we sucked—we didn’t make one of our five goals.”
Karalee and I were driving from Sechelt to Gibsons on BC’s sunshine coast to catch the noon ferry back to the mainland. The day before we had celebrated our 34th anniversary and were happy after having had a four-day mini break together away from the busyness of regular life.
My mobile rang this April morning and I answered it on the car speakerphone. It was a reporter from the National Post newspaper. He asked if I heard the news and with a sinking heart I said that we hadn’t. He then told us that our good sailing buddy John Ridsdel had been murdered by beheading by the Abu Sayyaf terrorists who had kidnapped John and four others off the docks of a marina in the Southern Philippines September 21, 2015.