Hard work isn't enough
Hard work isn’t enough. And more work is never the real answer. The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. It’s actually one part determination, one part ingenuity, and one part laziness.
Reid Hoffman
I can strongly relate to this quote and it makes me think about all my excellent colleagues. I can count how many fantastic Production Managers, Supervisors, Planners, and Engineers I have seen during my career who ultimately failed to deliver outstanding results despite their hard work. They came to work every single day and put all their energy into keeping the factory running.
However, they were afraid to step back and be horrified by how inefficient the daily troubleshooting was. They had no time to slow down and analyse an issue in depth to dig to the root cause and eliminate it forever. Many amazing engineers jumped on the machine when the “well-known, persistent” failure mode popped up to make the usual fixes, and watched the machine to see any results – and they missed the opportunity to see what’s the actual failure mode.
The common point is that all of them wanted to DO something. They did not want to STOP and WAIT. No one can blame them. They made massive efforts and many times delivered good results despite all the challenges. And they went home exhausted. They appeared every day a bit more enervated. Then many of them either gave up or quit – to start it again.
Because business leaders managing volatile and unstable business hires the best people. The hard workers. The good news is there are alternatives:
- Make a paradigm change and follow the basic safety traffic light concept: Stop-Think-Act
- Contact me to see how to get quick wins by simplifying the key work processes, eliminating unnecessary work and how to support the front-line leaders
- Follow a successful businessman:
I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
Bill Gates
Do you have a question or need help?
Here to Back You Up – Have a question or facing a challenge? Send us your question, and we will do our best to answer promptly. Need more than a quick chat for your complex issue? Reach out for a complimentary discovery meeting, where we can delve into how Clover Consulting is poised to assist you.
