Scenario: "Have you read 's new management book? It's awesome! It says we need to do , , and __. Dude, we're going to rock our industry. Yay!"

Good business books preach pretty cool things: systemize your business, confront employee dilemmas, incorporate healthy environments, unite a team toward a singular purpose, yadda, yadda, yadda.

We humans read, but...

Business management books all sound great; and, you'd think we'd be better off than 99.1231532% of businesses out there if we incorporated just one idea from every book we've read.

Yet, what do most of us do after reading a rockin' business book (and we Trizlers are often guilty of this)?

Diddly squat. Nothing. Nada.

We read the good stuff like it's our drug of choice, but we rarely take it to heart.

Let's counter that apathy.

We present to you our (hopefully) fantabulous, rockin', pseudo-patent-pending 3-step process to uncover why most of us suck as managers -- and what we can do about it.

1. The problem.

   126f5afcd7035b305f7c48747b7d8564 "Day-to-day activities." "What's needed now." "Pressures of the day." Blah. Most of us focus on fighting daily fires, constantly. Solely. The sad fact? Daily activities will continuously be there if we let it. Why do workaholics exist? As soon as workaholics finish a task, there's another one waiting for them. And another. And another. And another. Instead of systemizing our business processes, we take the "We just gotta do it today" short-term view. According to the Harvard studies, we're all pretty lousy managers: 277335f874bd8af51f772e63d1d0e794 Yes, daily activities are important; but, if we consistently put those at the expense of rockin' our businesses for the future, we're in for a disastrous surprise.

2. Why it hurts us.

   When we solely put our energy into accomplishing the day-to-day activities, we weaken our company's long-term stability. We cripple our company's foundation to maybe, hopefully, someday grow the sucker. Or, serve employees better. Or, delight customers. Or, market, manage, and lead like the superstars that we are. What are we doing? 2399031dc41afc043857708e7200078f Solely managing daily activities is akin to blowing off investing in the business. It's like running a championship track meet without the required training. Or, it's like going on a long date Nicole Richie without eating beforehand. (Zing!) Sure, you can forget the long-term; but it'll probably kill your business. Holding onto your company by a thread sucks.

3. The solution.

   Forget your day-to-day activities just for second. Slowly but surely take a "time-out-so-I-can-rock-this-business" study power session in your daily activities. If you take out just a small percentage of your day to do it, you'll be much better off in building your business like how you once imagined. Humans thrive on questions, so here are some to guide you (and these definitely aren't conclusive, so feel free to come up with your own): faef1453c076ef1f56729fc6d2069c91 (That last question keeps us in check to do things we thrive on doing; hopefully it'll help you, too.)

"But what if I don't have the time for it?!"

You do. To start, just place in one hour of "time-for-my-bad-self-to-reflect" into your schedule. Try it daily for three weeks, and improve on each day. Then see what happens.

Reflect, ponder, think, and build your bad-ass business like it ain't no thang but a chicken wing on a string.

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