This is newsletter #28 in the series. If you have missed prior newsletters, and are enjoying the series, we encourage you to take advantage of complete Leadership and Life Skills Program. Click on the coupon at the bottom of this page.

If you want to avoid working or living in an atmosphere of constant crisis, urgent deadlines, perpetual emergencies, and never-ending changes in priorities, pay attention to what you’re doing and how you are managing your schedule and your projects!

Perpetual management by crisis occurs when there’s no vision, and there are no clearly stated goals or systems in place to move your business or career forward. If all of your time is taken up putting out fires, or reacting to problems and not initiating positive action, then you have an atmosphere of continuous crisis that will wear you down and create negative stress. When your team isn’t properly trained, when you’re disorganized, or when you don’t have a plan, you’ll feel like you’re spending most of your time managing crises.

The unexpected will always happen, especially when you don’t expect it!  You’ll need to be able to switch lanes, reassign tasks, react quickly, and move to solve the problem. Effective crisis management is a great skill to have, but it's one you want to use only when it's absolutely necessary—in times of real crisis! If you’re the source of the problem, and your lack of leadership is what’s causing repeated crisis within the company, then that's an issue. When there’s no control and no planning, the result is a growth (in epidemic proportion) in negative stress.

Be guided by your goals, manage your time, set priorities, train your team, delegate effectively and you’ll eliminate the stress involved with chronic crisis. By doing that, you’ll have the energy to effectively manage your business during true and unexpected times of real crises.
Remember:

• Chronic crisis management occurs when there’s no planning.
• Eliminate those tasks that waste time or can be delegated to someone else.
• Know what you have to do, plan your course of action, and do it—now!
• Complete all tasks in their order of priority.
  

The above content is extracted from Mike Holt's Leadership Skills textbook.