Those "busy bastards"...
I was recently reading Colin Powell's new book "It
Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership" and the General had an interesting
concept that I have never heard of before, he called it the "busy
bastards". Now I don't remember how General Powell came about with that
term, I do remember that he heard it from one of his colleagues in the Army
during his long and distinguished career. Nevertheless it is an interesting
concept. The General was referring to those individuals who sometimes have
exceptional skills but confuse being "busy" with being productive.
Having spent a short time in the Army myself, I stopped and thought about this
for a while, in such a short time a met plenty of "busy bastards"
too! Don't get me wrong, many of the guys I served with are exceptional leaders,
Soldiers and human beings but many of them truly believed that the way to show the
"boss" that we were being productive was by being busy. I started thinking about this concept as it
applies to business ownership and entrepreneurship and I thought "Many of
the small business owners I know are busy bastards too!"
Let's think about this for a minute. Usually small business
owners are pressed for time. We have to figure out how to market our products,
plan and supervise our operations,
manage our resources effectively, maintain our financial accounts, pay
our employees, etc, etc. More often than
not we don't have a Human Resources department or a Finance department that can
do this for us, we have to do it on our own. However a business owner doing all
of these tasks doesn't necessarily mean that he must be "busy". We
need to strive to move beyond being busy. Is the way I am operating the most
effective way? Is my marketing really working? Am I doing payroll the most
efficient way? Being a "busy bastard" prevents us from THINKING
about our business and how to improve. If a business owner stops thinking and
innovating they are bound to fail.
In the export/import business it is REALLY easy to fall on the
"busy bastard" rut. Try completing a SED or using AES for a minute
without being frustrated. Do not let the
tasks become "busy work". Take the time to think about your business
and how to improve, constantly. We must always be productive but never
"busy". That is a good lesson that I have learned from this book,
which by the way I recommend, it is an amazing read.
Look forward to your comments.
