Taking Time Makes Time

Ned, operations manager for an auction house in Portland, Oregon, told session nine of the Leadership Development Lab...

"In week two of the Leadership Development Lab we were asked to set a goal and share it with our work team. I set a goal to quadruple the average daily output of our inventory team. I shared the goal with the team and empowered them to find ways to help us reach this stretch goal.

"As a result, the team became more engaged and we saw improvements right away. One team member, Melinda, became so engaged that she wanted to be able to quality check and correct her work, a task which had been reserved for me. She came to me wanting to learn how to correct any mistakes she found in our software system and on the web. I was very busy and thought to myself 'I don't have time for this.' Then I realized that if I didn't show her how to make corrections now I would have to make the time to do the work later. I thought to myself, 'I don't have time NOT to do this!'

"So, I decided to train her using Turbo's 3-step on-the-job training method. I told her how to do it as I physically showed her how to do it. Then, I asked her to do the work while I talked her through it. Finally, I asked her to do it one more time while she told me what she was doing as she did the work.

"In less than ten minutes she had learned how to do the quality check and was successfully doing what had been taking me several hours a week to do.

"The lesson I learned from this experience is when I stop and take the time to teach my team new skills, I can get a ten-fold return on the time investment. I make great things happen.

"The action I call you to take is fearlessly look at the jobs you are doing that you could delegate if you took the time to teach someone how to do something new.

"The benefit you will gain is a more skilled staff and more time to focus on other tasks. You might even be able to quadruple your production!"

Does quadrupling your production sound too good to be true? Remember this story started with a stretch goal Ned was committed to. Then that inspiring goal was shared with his team. His motivating, stretching goal stimulated his team to find new and better ways to get the job done.