Without systems in place, people (and organizations) become reactionary. It takes a lot of brain power even to remember that you need to do professional development or hold an all-staff gathering, let alone to plan it. Without a system to automatically schedule things (e.g., staff retreat is always the second Monday in August), it often is forgotten or becomes a mad scramble to organize.
It happens for meeting agendas — if you don’t automatically create one from the notes of the last meeting, people often go to meetings without any preparation and utilize unnecessary energy to remember where the group left off the last time they gathered.
Every time you need to make a decision — even something as simple as “What do we need to talk about at this meeting?” or “Should I eat an apple or a candy bar?” — mental capacity is diminished. Save your cognitive brilliance for the things that matter by creating a system that allows you to automatically be proactive instead of reactive.
