Take Time to Think

Most of us are so busy doing, that we don't take the time to think about what we're doing. It's a constant daily struggle to put out the fires, answer the questions, get the bids in on time and try to develop a harmonious organization.

Eventually, you do need to stop and think. Whether you do it after everyone else has gone home, in your car on the way to and from the office, or wherever, you've got to stop and think. Here are the four questions to ask yourself:

• What are we currently doing?
• What should we do next?
• What other things should be done?
• What we should not be doing?

These sound like pretty simple questions, but when you analyze them in your own business, you'll find that if you can't come up with answers you're not working from a plan. You're just going down there and being a fireman on a daily basis. Admittedly, you're the fire chief, but that doesn't help to put the fire out. A strong plan that you share with your managers is the best way to keep going and keep building and keeping your ideas at the front, so that you can continue to expand and grow and develop.

A good way to do this is to get some input from others. You don't have to be the only guy with an idea. Many of your managers probably have good ideas if they're allowed to express them in the proper atmosphere, which is probably a meeting.

Here are some tips about how to run a good meeting:

• Listen. Listen to everyone's ideas, paraphrase their ideas and write them down on a board.
• Don't put anyone on the defensive. Assume that everybody's ideas have value.
• Don't let your ideas smother everyone else. Your primary job is to give their ideas precedence. Remember that if you are interested and alert to what they're saying, others in the room will be too. And this is contagious.
• Keep everyone at the meeting informed about the decisions that have been made or what ideas are going to be explored. Decide who is going to explore them best is a team of two or three people.
• Set a date when they will report back with their solutions or suggestions. If it's a fairly complicated problem and will take a couple of weeks or longer, be sure and check back once a week with whomever's in charge of the committee to see how progress is going. Otherwise, it may just die because people get busy.
• If that happens, at your next meeting people will feel that the ideas aren't followed up and that the meetings area waste of time and you will have failed in your basic plan, which is getting ideas from others.