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Texas ISD School Guide
Texas ISD School Guide







Short Stories for Teachers

Two People Doing the Same Job Destroys Productivity. Here's Why
By:Bryan Beckstead

Copyright (c) 2009 Bryan Beckstead

Productivity is all about getting the maximum amount of production from the minimum amount of activity. That's why two people doing the same job destroys any pretense of getting value from either person's involvement. Let's look at the classic example.

You have been planning your day's activities, in advance, as you should. You have decided that you want a specific person in your organization to perform a specific job and you have also time activated that activity to be done today between 10:00 AM and Noon. All is the way it should be.

You get to work and you relay your instructions to your employee and head off to do what you have planned for the day. After lunch you decide to check in on your employee and see how he did on that task you had asked him to do. A quick glance and you discover a disaster. Not only was the task that you had asked to be done not done as you asked, but your employee had taken it upon himself to do an entirely unrelated task that had not been necessary, in place of what you had asked and expected to be done. What had gone wrong?

First, someone's time was now totally wasted. Either your time was now wasted, the time you spent on planning, detailing, and organizing the task. Or your employee had just wasted two hours doing a task you had not wanted done. This is the classic productivity waste when two people decide to do the same job and in the end, the job is not done and everyone has to start from scratch.

In this case, when you approach the employee and ask them why the initial job was not done, he or she will invariably start off with the rationale of "I thought ..." detailing their reason why not doing what you wanted and replacing it with a job of their choosing makes more sense. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard that rationale.

"I thought" has no place in this situation. You, the person in charge have already done the thinking in this situation. The time has been spent on the thinking part of this process; two people do not have to independently think through this task. By your employee taking it upon himself to rethink your decision and reverse it and go off on his own, makes your entire management decision function redundant. How does it feel to be made redundant?

Every time this happens in your company, your business, your day to day living, you are forced to spend at least twice as much time doing simple tasks because you are letting people make you redundant and unnecessary. How often does this happen to you? You invest your time only to find out that when you hand off the task or project to some one else, it takes on a life of its own. This situation plays out a number of different ways but the end result is, activities take substantially longer to get done because the initial thought process was ignored.

The solution to this problem is simple; decide who is in charge and let that person make the decisions. I said it was a simple problem, not necessary an easy solution. One person per task, one person making the decisions, everybody does their job, things have a chance of getting done on time and in a reasonable time frame. It sounds so simple but the reality is, very few companies, businesses or organizations can accomplish it.

In seminars when I caution people about running companies with the "I thought" mentality, they get offended and defensive. They counter with "people have a right to express themselves and they have a right to have their voice heard". I agree with all of that, except the part when all of this freedom of speech and sharing is suppose to take place. If you want to get a reasonable return on your time, get production up where it should be, you have to start to get your people and yourself on the same page when it comes to setting the course and getting things accomplished.

Someone has to make the decisions and then someone has to carry out those decisions, period. It's not a debating team you are running; it's a business.

Bryan Beckstead is the creator of the Power Empowerment Group and has been involved in the Time Management and Productivity industries for almost 35 years. If you are really serious about improving your quality of life, visit him at http://www.powerempowerment.com FREE E-Book, Power Time System's Top 100 Time Management Tips. Go to http://powerempowerment.com/top-100-time-management-irrefutables.html






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