Two decades ago, when I first saw traffic policemen at work, I did not realize that one day, entrepreneurs and business leaders would be behaving exactly like them.
Here is how.
A traffic policeman’s job entails the following:
1. He has to be perpetually busy and if he takes even a one-minute break from directing traffic, all the hell will break loose.
2. No matter how much traffic he clears up, more keeps coming. He never gets done.
3. His job is to just cope – he can’t solve the problem by installing traffic lights — that is a higher-up’s job.
Believe it or not, many entrepreneurs and business leaders are doing exactly the same – we respond to WhatsApp or Slack every 5-10 minutes, afraid that if we were to not do that, the company would stop running.
Let us not be WhatsApp or Slack policemen. Staying perpetually busy is not what we are paid for.
In the business world, everybody’s job is to solve problems, not to keep directing email traffic for eternity.
– Rajan