Tim Bursch

I was listening to My Side of the Mountain in the car with my kids. If you don’t know the story, it’s about a boy that learns how to live in the mountains by himself.

One part of the story reminded me of the need for systems. The scene from his journal starts with something like this … boy gets hungry and it takes work to find food. Then he’s tired from all the searching but he doesn’t have a place to sleep. So he works on making a shelter and then he’s hungry again and so on. In his journal he wonders how prehistoric people got anything done! So the story continues on with him figuring out some daily systems and tools.

I think the same goes for business. You go looking for new business (hunting), working hard and getting tired along with finding business for today. Then a few leads come in and you’re overwhelmed. Same story of reaction until you do the hard work of creating a system.

Here’s the rub though, it takes extra time and energy to build the process while doing the daily work, but work that will pay off.

What part of your business is in reaction mode? What could you create to ease the pain? Any ideas to share?