WHAT YOU FEEL:everything IS a priority but you don’t have enough fingers and toes to plug all the holes
PERSPECTIVE: there are 100 hours of work to do and ten hours of time. There are many holes in the dam and you find yourself plugging the one that leaks the most today.
It’s like standing in front of a dam holding back a river of water. Your first issue of the day arises, and pokes a hole in the dam and you plug it with one finger. Then the next and another finger. After a few hours, you’ve encountered ten issues and you’ve used your ten fingers. Problem solved. Then another leak springs and then another. No problem, you have ten toes. Soon it’s only lunchtime and you have used all ten fingers and all ten toes. Then one more comes and you figure out a way to use your tongue. Welcome to every day of the week for the entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur uses his or her fingers, toes and tongue to plug all the holes in the dam. You may plug one for a day, but only until another leak springs. Most entrepreneurs are in a state of chaos due to too many things to do, little time and very few resources. Everything needs to be done at the same time. Financing, people, product, customers, business models, technology, operations, finance, cash, and the list goes on. Entrepreneurs are in a constant state of hole plugging partly because you lack financial and human resources. But that is only part of the issue. The other part, and the part you can change, is the fact that the entrepreneur has not set priorities and aligned the scarce resources of the company to those priorities.
Many entrepreneurs scoff at this. “We can’t set priorities. We have to do everything to build the business.” Every company on the planet has more to do than they have time, money and resources. Entrepreneurs fail to see this. They believe that they need to address everything to build the business. This is a recipe for failure. Especially with limited resources, you must decide the organization’s top priorities and align resources and processes to those priorities. Does that mean that you neglect the rest of the business? Of course not. What it does mean is that when you set the priorities, you treat them differently and with more focus and energy than other activities. When you set something as a priority, you should create an operating structure (e.g., a daily meeting) that brings the organization’s focus and accountability to that priority. In addition, these top priorities require your best thought and the inputs and expertise from various constituents. It not only about setting the priorities, but building the process that brings the focus, substance, expertise and accountability of your organization to those priorities.
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