While slowly catching up on the RSS feeds I neglected over Christmas, I came across a great post by Seth Godin called Clean firetrucks.

Why are the trucks so clean, a friend asked. After all, a clean firetruck isn't a lot better at putting out fires than a smudged one.

The answer: Because when there isn't a fire, the firemen wait for the siren to ring. And while they're waiting, they clean the truck.

Sounds a lot like where you work. Most organizations are staffed with people waiting for the alarm to ring. Instead of going out to the community and working to prevent new fires, the mindset is that firemen are working to put out the fires that have started. Hotel desk clerks don't write letters or make calls to generate new business they stand at the desk waiting for business to arrive. Software engineers are often overwhelmed with an endless list of programming fires and rarely get a chance to think about what they ought to build next.

...

In fast-changing markets, clean firetrucks show attention to detail but rarely lead to growth and success.

What a great way to describe a stuck but busy organization. "They sure have clean firetrucks."

I'm with Seth; this is a great way to describe many organizations. It covers the lack of vision that "lost sight of the forest for the trees" conveys and adds on lack of initiative for free. After all, a lack of vision is probably accompanied by a lack of initiative, or at least it will soon be.

Who knows, with Seth Godin's huge readership maybe this willl succeed "jump the shark" as the next phrase mandatory to work into any conversion (or blog post) if you want to sound in-the-know.

Posted by JoshC at January 6, 2006 6:56 PM

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