The brutal reality of running a business

A question came in that I hear all the time: how do I keep from getting dispersed when there is too much coming at me at any one given time? How do I avoid it? Avoid it? Come on, man. Why do you think they call it hard work?

This is the part where I lose my mind. Remember that old 7-Eleven jingle? That is my life. Seven in the morning to eleven at night, because I work hard to make sure everything gets done by the end of the day. Guys, it is brutal to stay on top of it all, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But there are a couple of things I do that keep the insanity manageable, and I will give them to you right now.

Bring me solutions, in writing

First, I make people put things in writing. And if someone shows up at my desk to ask me for permission to do something, or to ask me how to solve a problem, or to tell me the sky is falling, that person is in serious trouble. It is not allowed in my shop.

I need data. I need the situation. I need solutions. And I make sure the people around me bring me exactly that. This one rule keeps down my traffic.

Think about what most of the traffic at your desk actually is: people handing you their thinking. Refuse the handoff. Make them bring the answer along with the problem, in writing, and watch your traffic drop.

You are a firefighter

Second, understand what the job actually is. Generally speaking, I am a firefighter. I am always putting out the fires. Why is this not flowing? Why is this not going right? Why is this not happening correctly? I assert myself into that area and I debug it, because it is always a stuck flow.

Somebody got an idea in their head: well, in order to do this, you have to do that. And in order to do that, you first have to do this other thing. And then you have to put Christmas bells on it and make it snow. The stupidity of what a human being can come up with to make a simple thing complex is un-freaking-believable.

So your job as the person in charge is to walk into that area asking one question: how do you make it flow?

It cannot take forever

I ran into this exact thing recently. I come back to Florida, I see my guys, we are doing accounting, and I hear it is taking forever. Forever. And I go, no, it cannot take forever. I do not have forever.

Now, I am not an accountant and I am not a bookkeeper. But I am smart, and the questions do not require a license. What are you doing? How is that going? Why are you doing it this way? What other way could we do it? What if we did it this way instead? Oh, you would let me do it that way? Yes, I would let you do it that way. Well, then it would be much sooner and much faster and much better. That whole conversation is the debug. You find the considerations that are sticking the flow, and you remove them.

And I will tell you something else. If you find a person who will not let it flow, who holds onto those considerations for dear life no matter what you remove, get rid of them. Do that and you will instantly find everything goes better.

The hard part

They call it hard work, but honestly, most of it is just the frustration, because the whole thing is a mental exercise. It is brutal. Do you know what the hard part really is? Being willing to keep showing up and to subject yourself to this insanity. That is hard. Sometimes you just want to run away from home, right? It is so frustrating, so challenging, so irritating that all you get is the ick.

But you keep showing up, and you bring order to it. Why is it not flowing? Why is it not moving on down the line? You remove the barrier, you remove the consideration, and now things move down the line. And you go, well, that is how it is supposed to be.

That is running a business. That is being in charge: getting things to move. You go in there with the knowledge you have and the altitude of the boss, you debug it, and you get it flowing. It is what I do, from seven to eleven, baby. Seven to eleven.