Smile, Smile...The House is on Fire

We all have fires to put out.  Most of us have a fire on our desk every twenty minutes.

There's always something freshly burning, needing attention now.  But if you let the fires win, you lose.  The fires just serve as a distraction, and half the time, they're not really fires at all.  If you start losing sales, it's easy to freak out, call it a fire, and start throwing buckets of water on it.

But, what if you just let it burn?  Just let it burn through your desk, your computer, the whole damn building.  What then?

We put out these fires because that's what we're wired to do, whether it's right or wrong.  The hard thing to do is to let it sear, singe and smoke, and then rebuild, fresh from nothing. 

So, here's my suggestion.  The next time a fire starts burning, pull out a bottle of Jack, pour a drink, and enjoy the nullification of the old guard, the unwillingness to change, the voodoo metrics, the shouting and consumer torture.  Smile for your good times, the Cannes awards, the old battles and be proud of the work that's been done.

But know what's true now.  The customer has always been smarter than they were given credit for, but now they have the tools to prove it.  Let it burn, and celebrate with them, because you are them.

photo by trishalicious via flickr