Often when I meet or speak with clients, this is a question that inevitably makes its way into the conversation.
What keeps you up at night?
What do you worry about? What are you afraid of happening? What are you afraid of not happening?
In our personal lives, away from work, we worry about the late-night knock at the door—who is it? Or that our daughter has gone on her first date and we stay awake waiting for her safe return. Or our son has the car out for the first time with his friends, and we hope that the lessons and wisdom we’ve imparted to him stick, and that peer pressure isn’t the prevailing piece of advice for the night.
In our professional lives, it’s the terrorism attacks, it’s the active shooters, it’s the multiple explosive devices placed on our property to be remotely detonated, causing mass panic and terror… No. No, it’s not.
What keeps us awake at night is the same thing that happens in our personal lives—the worry that something is going to happen that we can’t control and that we may need to manage well after the problem exists. Are we prepared enough? Did we do enough to train the staff? Did we purchase the right equipment? Are we up to date?
So what do we do? We plan for it. We write about it. We seek advice on it. We talk it over with our colleagues. We stay up to date on proactive trends. We conduct risk assessments to ensure we’re prepared for the right things, not just the flavour-of-the-month emergencies. We practice it. Then we do it all over again.
I’d be interested to hear what’s keeping you up at night. I sleep well. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I worry about you not getting enough sleep. So let’s work on getting you there.
Remember… Plan the Work. Work the Plan.
