Are you in the Mole-Whacking Business?

You must have seen the arcade game Whack A Mole* which is all about smacking cute little moles on the head as they peep out of their holes. Fun game! Just as you knock one back another appears and another, and another… until your time, or your money, runs out. Fun, but infuriating!

Do you ever feel like that game mirrors your work – maybe your whole life?

Always fixing the latest problem, always dealing with mini or sometimes major crises?

Of course, for those of you in love with the struggle this is all part of the game, part of what you love about being in business. Fire-fighting can be fun!

A crisis occurs and we rush in and save the day. It’s high-octane, high-energy and a great adrenaline rush. As Deming said,

‘One gets a good rating for fighting a fire; the result is visible; can be quantified. If you do it right the first time, you are invisible. You satisfied the requirements. That is your job. Mess it up, and correct it later, you become a hero.’

I’m sure you’re not old enough to remember public service broadcasts! They were like adverts only non-commercial, aimed purely at educating and informing the apparently ‘not too bright’ population of Britain at the time.

Anyway, there was one about a family whose water pipes had burst. It showed how the father had all the family trained to go through a well-rehearsed, well-drilled process of dealing with it – turn off stop cock, get buckets under leak, mop up water with old towels…

At the end of the ad a smug father and his family stand there proudly, crisis overcome. And just as you’re thinking that it’s their well-drilled ‘crisis management’ that’s being recommended, an even smugger voiceover pipes up, ‘Well done Mr Mole, but what a pity you let it happen in the first place!’

Fire-fighting can be fun. But! What if our time or money runs out?

It isn’t sustainable, it’s a waste of our resources, and it’s certainly not good for our reputation – with our team or our customers.

Yes, some fire-fighting is inevitable; there will always be the knowns and the unknowable, the controllable and the uncontrollable. No matter how much we plan or anticipate the future there will always be a certain level of uncertainty.

But – if you’re constantly fire-fighting, if every business day is a game of Whack A Mole, then maybe it’s time to call in MPL pest control* and get some preventative systems in place.

We don’t kill moles, but we do prevent them from digging up your business.

Do one thing: Look back over the last couple of months and check out how much mole-whacking you’ve done. Think about how having systems in place for each area of your business could have prevented this and saved you and your business time and money.

If you need help, our intensive two-day Systems4Scale Bootcamp is for you! To find out more information you can download our brochure here.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week!

*no moles were harmed in the writing of this article.