There is no virtue in hard work. What matters are results. Working hard may or may not produce results. In fact, working hard usually means there is a concentration on effort rather than thinking smarter.
Some employers like to see their people coming in early and staying late under the perception that this produces top results. Many employers like to see their employees busy, even overloaded with work, because they see busy as good.
Galley slaves could do more I guess by being pushed. Water bearers could carry more water- I guess. until they began to spill more after being pushed too far.
It does no good to encourage pregnant women to work harder and produce faster.
You don’t really want to be pushing the cook to work harder, probably not even the waitress.
Hmmm, what does this have to tell us about our employees?
Busy is not necessarily good. Results are good.
Working hard is overrated. Working harder to get more done in our age of service and information is fool hardy. What we really want are results. Let’s understand what is important to accomplish, what is critical to success and hold ourselves accountable to getting these results.
Employees working hard is not good for you. Inspired employees who enjoy what they do as significant parts of a list of strategic goals- is good for you
Slack provides useful benefits. Lack of slack costs dearly.
- Imagine people calling up for an estimate get a relaxed unhurried voice on the phone that is empathetic and helpful. This improves conversions and sales. Payoff is more profit.
- Lack of slack causes work to get put off – prospects don’t get timely estimates. Prospects cool down- maybe find someone more responsive. Conversions go down. Profits go down.
- With slack, people are operating from fun and relaxed rather than tense and stressed – which basketball team is going to win here? hanging on or hanging out having fun?
- Fighting friction requires innovation. People with some slack can listen better, are better engaged and have more tolerance for new ideas.
Results are what count. More slack provides more results. Better results improve marginal profits per unit of production. We have to improve our productivity and our profit margins because this is what allows us to take our company to the next level of growth – what does that mean to you?
- Do you want to expand operations to a new city?
- Do you want more leads, better conversions and happier customers?
- Do you just want to do some innovation?
- Yes, just the act of creating innovation takes extra energy. Change requires innovation. Change increases risk. All these take extra energy and time and therefore involve extra risk. All innovation ripples through an office and affects how things are done and affects people. This takes extra energy and involves increased risk.
We need more robustness, we need higher profit margins, so you can take your company to the next level.
We just have to figure out how to measure results.
We need to see results now, not the end of the month or end of the quarter. We need to know when things bog down and help is need. The right technology can give us the right results and provide accountability.
You need slack. You are doing stuff that does not pay well and paying huge costs for friction because you do not have the slack- the time to see what is happening- to appraise the intangibles are impacting the business and costing you money. You need slack.
How do you create slack? By systematically addressing friction.
What are your thoughts? Pretty radical idea – giving more slack to employees… you probably have a few thoughts here.
Was something left out here?
What was not taken into consideration?
Feel free to leave a comment or email or call
