- Matthew M. Thomas
- Read Time: 3 mins
We’ve probably all seen the adventure movie scene where the main protagonists suddenly find themselves surrounded by hostile armed forces, encircled, and not sure how they are going to find their way out.
At that point, typically, everyone has their weapon out, and everyone is at high alert.
There are some very carefully worded conversations between the surround-ers and the surrounded. A negotiation happens, with the surrounded party trying its best to find its way free (or at least not dead), and the surround-ers not necessarily buying it.
What happens next, of course, depends on the plot of the movie. Sometimes they are captured, sometimes they are rescued, sometimes they join forces, sometimes they are robbed of valuables, and so on.
But there are two things that no one does in these situations:
- They don’t just start swinging wildly, or shooting at random, hoping to hit something.
- They don’t just freeze up, not doing anything, hoping that they’ll somehow get away without too much loss or damage.
We often face the feeling of being surrounded – with our forces and resources overwhelmed – as a part of leadership. Multiple critical business decisions have to be made at the same time, and we end up feeling stuck. Taking a crack at one thing prevents us from being able to deal with another, it seems. And oftentimes, the things we are dealing with all interconnect in a way that prevents us from really seeing a way forward.
And yet, despite being the protagonists in the story, when we find ourselves overwhelmed by a large, surrounding force of critical decisions, we often take two very different actions than our adventure movie compatriots.
Read more: When everything is happening at once, adventure awaits!
Frank came to me and told me that he had "downsized" his bookkeeper. She hadn’t balanced the checkbook more than once a year in who knows how long. And there were a lot of checkbooks. You see, Frank ran a nonprofit and his board had, long ago, been worried about the stability of banks, so they’d invested about $100,000 in pretty much every bank in town to stay under the FDIC limit at the time. The monthly financial reports for their 7-figure nonprofit were about 50 pages thick, and despite that no one could really tell how much they really had, or where they were headed. Spreadsheets upon spreadsheets were used to analyze and distribute financial information, but none of it was clear – and some of it was inaccurate.
Over and over again, I talk to business owners who feel trapped inside their own businesses. Recently, one of them described it as feeling like he was “held hostage” by his business. Why would he say that?
If it’s one thing I hear from business owners and leaders all the time, it’s that they’re busy. While “busy” is, for some of us, a badge of honor, for most of us it’s just reality. And despite being in leadership, being our own boss, or at least having quite a bit of latitude, we start to feel like our business holds us hostage. We can’t get away because of how busy we are.
In our 
