Fighting Fires – 7 years too late?

04.08.14 Last week I was lucky enough to spend some time in Scotland to attend and watch some fantastic events at the Commonwealth Games. Due to the ceremony you could not find a hotel room under £2,500 for the week in Glasgow so we had opted to stay in Perth just over an hours train journey from Glasgow’s Victoria Street Station.

After a late finish at the athletics at Hampden Park we arrived for the 22:48 train to be told it was full and no more people were being allowed on board, very frustrating when the next train was not until 23:38.

On the platform directing passengers was none other than the MD of Scotrail, Steve Montgomery.  I decided to question him on why with 7 years to prepare for the games, trains were too short and were an hour apart? His reply in summary to me was – Do you expect to just turn up and get a train, and also that he was tired of listening to customers telling him about having had 7 years to prepare and that all available rolling stock was in use.

This raised several questions for me:

  • Does an MD Who is tired of listening to customers set a good example for his business?
  • As the MD, why was he fighting fires and working at the station at 10pm at night? Surely an MDs role is strategic planning.

As I waited 50 minutes for the next train I used the time to reflect upon what fires I was fighting in my business and what problems will my business have in seven years time by not thinking strategically now.

It reminded of a recent blog by Simon Chaplin about creating a “not to do list” to give business owners time to think and act strategically.

I would love to hear how much time you find yourself fire fighting and not acting strategically and what are you going to stop, take action and move yourself into having more time to work on the business and plan for the future!

2014-07-22T07:47:11+01:00