BEFORE you start to work...

“Every battle is won BEFORE it is fought.” -Suntzu

There is a disease that is affecting most businesses. Training is not seen for its real value. Current priorities take such a hot seat that future conditions are not ascertained. Vision narrows scope of action. All as attention spans of the next generation are dwindling to seconds instead of minutes or hours of our predecessors we are locked into a vicious cycle.

A cycle of …fires.

For all the lamenting and anguish to the contrary managers love the cycle of fires. Fires are left to that all important range of hope instead of responsibility. Doing the best of what you can with what you have because you were caught unawares… or were you? 

Harsh… yes but true. Hear me out.

Fires are managed. Leaders, real leaders they do their best to instill a set of actions, motivations and desire to act. Fires should be put out before they begin by being the one thing no one seems to have the time to be anymore… proactive.

In the military I understood the teaching of Suntzu’s words in our training. It was not good enough for us to train. It was not good enough for us to just go over the steps. We practiced actions of what needed to be done in all sorts of, well sometimes, deplorable conditions. Until we could do some things in our sleep. This idea of training kept us alive. We did so in order to prepare contingency. Strategy has its place in proactive planning. Part of that strategy needs to be how to look for fires that might come and how to prepare against, be proactive toward, and squash fires if they break out, with a mind to minimizing collateral damage.

This is not a story about kindling folks but all sorts of metaphorical conundrums that plague the modern business battlefield everyday. Even the management calls them fires and in most cases the managers like it because technically they get to try to point fingers and blame the situation that ran out of control, the lack of resources, the lack of productivity… the truth? They set the fires by their own negligence and inaction and some of them are smart enough to know it and think, honestly think because the overall landscape has been this way that they are doing what the bosses up stairs really want. Here is a real wake up for you… just because the blind man cannot see the fire does not mean he escapes the flames. Real work is about thinking ahead, about saving the village before it is burned to the ground.

The words to tumble forth are always the same…. “We have always done it that way!... It should have worked… What could we do?... we were not expecting…”

The simple truth is that a leader looks fire right at their core and goes about making sure that the fire is taken care of as best as it can be…therefore “managed.” Then they go about building plans to defeat any fires from that same direction again. Create action plans, delegate proper bucket brigades and assign responsibilities. A leader makes sure lightning is managed before it strikes again a manager waits around for another strike in order to do something.

Mostly because most managers have been trained to manage but not train to lead. They are stuck being reactive because they don’t know another way. This is more rampant an issue than most management is willing to admit to. There is training out there that can prevent this from continuing, it is costing your business more than you ever know.

Kepner-Tregoe in the Rational Manager put together a great predictive model format for understanding how to look ahead down the road of the good, the bad, the ugly… and find a solution.

Not to every contingency that would be too counter productive, but certainly to major advantage opportunities and more importantly adverse happenstance. By delineating major events and incidents before they occur, identifying what the signs were, task who would be on the look out for the signs, what the triggers would be, then assigning personnel to the actions that need to happen BEFORE the situations happen. Guess what we have an active rational strategy to deal with both positive and adverse incident strategy.

FYI Kepner-Tregoe’s PSDM course, of which I am a graduate, is an excellent place to research the rational reasoning that is formulated on the observed stratagems of best military officers. Wonder were best military officers went to school? Though many can shout out different names of military halls of academia very proudly, I personally have little doubt that a good amount of them all were students of Suntzu, rightfully so and enough said.

Here we have it folks. Disease and cure. People know that if all you do is put out fires and ‘manage’ by hopping from one flame to the next that you are not really managing much of anything and that the eventuality is the same… burn out and loss, and more loss. In a long enough time line a fire burns out its source. However businesses mitigate the loss by tossing more kindling in, I mean people into the flames and so they go limping along.

When leaders step up to the plate, challenge the status quo, offer to look at predictive models and apply strategy to the future, well that is when we start getting ahead. Not just at a team level but at a corporate level. That is when the workplace becomes a game to see how far a team can go instead of seeing how many flames they can douse and cover up today.

Leaders are not firemen, not management.

Leaders succeed because they manage the battle BEFORE the battle. Train their people on RIGHT ACTIONS and execution. They have won the fight before the lines are drawn.

What are you going to do tomorrow? How does change management apply when the fires are out of control? One flame at a time. Take the flame and create afteractions that will describe what could have been done then make them proactive plans for how to fix it in the future.

Be the leader. Suntzu also said that the ultimate success is the win the battle without a struggle. IF you master predictive strategy you are a leader well on your way toward that lofty position.

Win without struggle = Leader

Until next time.

Hint folks Shan Institute is here to help.

再见

Zàijiàn