Do managers need to stop their firefighting?

If Lanny Goodman does his job right, the audiences of

executives and entrepreneurs that hear him speak are silent

deeply lost in thought when he's finished.

That's because he suggests that effective executives need

to probe deep into themselves to discover what they desire

for their companies.

Without that knowledge, Goodman says, executives

find themselves in the all-too-familiar role of firefighter,

addressing each day's litany of problems as they arise in the

business.

Goodman knows. Combining an undergraduate degree

in art with a graduate degree in finance, he built and sold

two manufacturing businesses. Taking the lessons he

learned as entrepreneur, he launched a consulting business,

spoke to 14 national conferences sponsored by Inc. magazine

as well as hundreds of other management seminars and

has seen his insights featured in the pages of Inc.

The manager-as-firefighter role, Goodman suggests, is

an ingrained habit. Managers often see themselves primarily

as problem-solvers, and they react to employees, the

telephone, competitors and the bank throughout the workday.

And managers

grow frustrated.

The problem,

Goodman says, is

this: Humans are

creative, and fighting

fires is anything

but creative.

"We have a

god-like ability to

create something

whether nothing existed before," Goodman says. "When

we're in reaction, we're not being creative. It's profoundly

dissatisfying."

Change, he says, requires deep questions: Am I running

my business, or is my company running me? What outcome

do I desire? At the end of my life, what do I hope I will have

accomplished?

"People will do things for meaning that they never will

do for money," Goodman says.

Once entrepreneurs and executives get in touch with

their deepest desires and begin exercising their creativity,

Goodman says their companies begin changing:

* Employees who are accustomed to delegating problems

upward for solution are called upon to solve their own

problems.

* Executives who once spent their days fighting fires find

they become impatient with anything that gets in the way

of pursuit of the outcomes they desire.

* Entrepreneurial companies, which often closely reflect

the founder's personality, become transformed as the chief

executive is transformed.

But is this just management flavor-of-the-month, forgotten

soon after the speaker leaves town?

"They say that most consultants give you what they

think you want to hear; Lanny doesn't play that game. As a

matter of fact, he 'rattles your cage' like no other consultant

I've run across," says John McManus of Magellan's, a catalog

retailer of travel supplies based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

McManus continued in a recent interview: "It's not your

business he focuses on it's you and your life and what you

really want out of life (which he helps you define) and then

he weaves in the way your business can help you reach these

goals. Pretty radical. But isn't that really what owning a

business is all about? Satisfying the needs of that business'

founders.