Too Busy to Change? Try Self Healing
I sat at my desk in disbelief. Did I really just hear that?
“I don’t have room for this in my five-year plan!”
The voice was a little louder than it needed to be,
and it certainly wasn’t something I thought I’d hear one of the CEO’s direct reports say to their face.
The “this” they were referring to?
Process improvement.
A bold admission for anyone to tell their boss at any level:
“I don’t plan on improving in the next five years.”
Maybe they hoped they would look impressive by saying, “I’m so busy and on top of things that I have the next five years packed to the gills!”
What everyone else heard, however, was, “I don’t have the capacity to entertain change.”
Can you think of a time when you were too busy to change?
What ultimately had to happen?
My guess is: something had to change.
Maybe it was your mindset.
Maybe it was a breaking point.
Maybe it was something more catastrophic than you thought possible.
But what if you didn’t always have to learn things the hard way?
The Healthy Company Framework is very intentionally named.
You want your company to be healthy, yes? (I hope you answered yes!)
Furthermore, you want to be healthy, yes?!
What if you had a framework for your business that allows you to do just that?
Hence the name, The Healthy Company Framework.
The Framework’s second principle is a Two-Part Epoxy made of Documentation and Self Healing. (And yes, the omission of the dash between Self and Healing is intentional.)
Self Healing is what allows you to have breathing room in your day.
You see, if you focus on packing all 40 hours full of work, you leave 0 hours for mistakes.
And, when they inevitably arise—whether they’re your fault or not—you have no time to fix them.
Or, maybe worse still, you drop one of the planned things, sacrifice your well being to get everything done, or perpetuate bad habits by missing something every time it comes up.
To apply Self Healing, you must make time to address mistakes. You apply the healing yourself.
You see, you can pack a week full of 40 hours’ worth of work by planning for mistakes!
We’re all human. Even AI makes mistakes.
You know you spend time putting out fires every week.
Yes, those fires vary in terms of size and complexity,
But if you’ve been around long enough, you can take a swing at how much of your week is spent around firefighting.
So build that into your schedule.
(And if you’re routinely low on your estimate, adjust accordingly!)
And when you do, remember to solve problems in a two-step process:
Reactive
Proactive
I bet you’re an expert at firefighting.
You might even be the best at saving the day.
But how good are you at finding the spark, that caused the ember, that grew into a fire, that ballooned out of control and ruined everyone’s day?
So, when you build in time to respond to the unknown, be sure you’re building in time to proactively stop sparks from happening in the first place.
When you do this, you’ll have both packed your next five years full to the gills
And be more than willing and able to participate in new things that life will throw your way.
And if this message resonates with you—let me know how. I’d love to talk with you about what stands out about it. I’d love to learn more about your story and, if the opportunity exists, find out where The Framework or Company Connections can help you get more time back in your day.
Too busy to improve? Try Self Healing.