Leading a business can seem like dealing with a constant stream of fire alarms.

But the fire alarms themselves are not the real problems, there’s a fire that triggers the alarm, and the alarm indicates that something you need to pay attention to and fix.

Even though the alarms are annoying, distracting, and are designed to capture all of your attention, we have to look past them.

Why?

For example, if your day starts with your CFO coming in to say “we’re out of money,” that’s a fire alarm.

The reason the business is out of money is the fire itself.

It’s very easy to go from silencing one fire alarm to another in a growing business. As a leader, you have to develop the habit and the presence to figure out what is causing the fire as an automatic process after putting the fire out.

Constantly reacting to only the alarm ensures more alarms will go off, working on solutions to the fire reduces the number of alarms and allows valuable time to make progress in other areas.