PREPARATION DRIVEN BUSINESS BRIEF™ #1

Why Does It Feel Like You’re Always Putting Out Fires?

Observation

Walk through almost any organization operating reactively and you will hear familiar expressions: “We’re slammed.” “Everything is urgent.” “We’ll deal with that later.” One issue is resolved only to be replaced by another, and constant activity begins to feel like productivity.

The problem isn’t that emergencies occur. Every organization encounters unexpected challenges. The problem begins when responding to emergencies becomes the organization’s normal operating posture. Leaders spend so much time dealing with what just happened that they have little time to prepare for what may happen next. Eventually, firefighting stops being an occasional necessity and becomes simply how the organization operates.

Business Impact

Perpetual firefighting creates costs that are difficult to see on a financial statement. Decisions are rushed. Priorities shift. Important initiatives are interrupted. Managers solve immediate challenges rather than developing people, improving processes, or preparing for what comes next.

More importantly, an organization can become accustomed to operating this way. Chaos starts feeling normal. Being overwhelmed becomes evidence of being productive. Leadership attention is measured by how quickly the latest emergency was resolved rather than by how many preventable emergencies never occurred.

The organization may be working extraordinarily hard while making surprisingly little progress.

How The Preparation Driven System™ Addresses It

The Preparation Driven System™, created by Todd Smith, begins with a different premise: organizations usually become reactive long before a crisis arrives. The crisis simply reveals the preparation—or lack of preparation—that preceded it.

Preparation is not predicting everything that might go wrong. It is deliberately considering what will be needed before action begins: responsibilities, information, resources, decisions, likely obstacles and contingencies.

That principle was learned long before it became a business philosophy. Working in construction, preparation began at the bottom of a ladder before climbing onto a slate roof. Tools, materials and requirements needed to be considered before the climb because discovering something was missing after reaching the roof meant coming all the way back down.

The lesson extends well beyond construction.

Preparation is most valuable when it occurs before it appears necessary.

Preparation-driven organizations therefore don’t measure effectiveness solely by how well they respond to fires. They continually examine what can be done today so fewer preventable fires require attention tomorrow.

Preparation Principle #1

Organizations don’t become reactive during a crisis. They reveal how prepared they were before the crisis arrived.

The Question

Think about the challenges your organization has faced during the past ninety days. How many were genuinely unexpected—and how many became emergencies because preparation began only after the challenge appeared?

Todd Smith
Creator, The Preparation Driven System™