Author: Nathan Crewe

There’s a huge difference between knowing what needs to be done and knowing how to do what needs to be done! They sound similar, however the devil’s in the detail! 

As an operations manager I knew exactly what needed to be done, but I knew absolutely nothing about HOW to do what needed to be done. I’d dive in to sort out late jobs or fill in for people who weren’t there. Most of the time I just ended up creating a mess that my team then had to sort out. 

I just didn’t understand the details of everything that needed to be done in order to achieve the outcome I knew about. That information was stored in my team member’s head!  

Do what I did and take the time to talk with your team to find out how they would want the job done when they’re not there. You’ll find out the small details that make your business excel over your competitors. 

To capture and record HOW your team members do what they do, try our free WorkFunnel PDF tool at: https://18.133.239.66/download-our-free-fillable-pdf-workfunnel/ 

I started my business because I was pretty sure that it would give me the money and free time I needed to do all the stuff I love.  The reality is that since starting my business I’ve had way less time than ever!

The problem was that my consulting business didn’t work without me being there. I had to be there telling the team how I wanted stuff doing. I felt that I had to be the one to solve all the problems and answer all the questions. That was until it hit me! Most of the questions were about HOW I wanted things done!

Once I started making it clear upfront how I wanted stuff done, giving the team members clear instructions, that contained all the resources they needed, I realised that the teams I worked with were totally capable! The team members were more empowered to complete the tasks knowing exactly what was expected, and I managed to regain control of my time.

Now I have more free time to enjoy doing the things I love!

To give your team members the clear instructions that they need, so you have more free time, try our free WorkFunnel PDF tool at: https://18.133.239.66/download-our-free-fillable-pdf-workfunnel/

Often, we’re away from the workplace, I’m talking about the place where all the work actually gets done. Not your office, but your front line. As leaders we play a significant part in defining how the work gets done. But what plays an even larger part is the things that we don’t see, everything we didn’t consider when we delegated the task to other people. 

I’m not talking about people slacking off when you’re not there. I’m referring to all the small, well intentioned actions that contribute to screwing the job up. These small screw-ups eat away at our efficiency and margin and keep us from getting on top of things.  

Getting up and going to look at the work being done is a total game changer. You’ll find stupid thing, simply amazing things and amazingly simple things! You’ll find out what’s really going on, bad and good! Work to eliminate the bad methods and replace them with the good methods you find.  

I find team members have cranky or odd ways of working because they don’t have a full understanding of the whole job or the customers’ needs. Equally, you may not have a full understanding of the challenges your team members have in delivering elements of your products and services. You don’t need to come up with all the answers. With a simple discussion with your team, together you’ll complete each other’s view of the whole job. You’ll find that the best way of doing something will present itself! 

We don’t set out to be purposely misconceived. Our natural instincts though can deceive us into thinking that we’re already doing something in the best way possible. The problem is that we only view a problem, task or job from a single perspective, our own perspective! The solutions we derive and implement therefore appear to be common sense… to us. To someone else who deals with a different part of the problem or are responsible for the job or task further down the line, these solutions can seem not so common sensical. This is because they have a different perspective to you. 

So how do you go about justifying one solution over another? Well, there is only one way to find out, and that’s to just try it! Whenever a potentially advantageous solution presents itself, just try it out for a day and measure the results. Essentially the purpose of a business is to use the tools, knowledge and skilled people it possesses to derive the most effective way of performing a particular activity. That desired activity can then be provided at the greatest margin, the lowest cost, in the fast time. Fundamentally in the way that most exceeds customers’ expectations. 

All of this might sound like common sense! However, my experience within industry has seen on numerous occasions, a lack of a team member’s willingness to ‘just try’ a different way, hold back and stagnate a whole business’s growth. 

We know that we can’t be right all the time, yet in the workplace we can often find this emotionally difficult to deal with, especially as a leader with onlooking team members.  

Once we understand that ideas are based on perspective, we can start to acknowledge that all ideas are unreliable. Ultimately ideas remain unreliable until tested in the real world. A leader’s role is to gain agreement from the surrounding team for strategy, direction and subsequent instruction. The aim is not to be right all the time, but rather to demonstrate an openness to admitting that quite often you can be wrong. Developing a character that is more approachable will build a team that will more readily accept your ideas and follow your instruction. 

But first, you need to admit to yourself that you can quite often be wrong! 

As humans there are many things that we just do naturally. These things are nearly always associated with survival. These natural instincts don’t always serve us well though. We approach the activity of work for instance with a batch and queue mindset, grouping and storing similar things in order to keep them together until the time is right to do something with them all at once, all in one go. It comes from our natural instinct to hoard things in preparation for bad times.  

This natural instinct can get in our way when it comes to finding the most effective methods of performing the tasks required to run our business. We need to engage instead with the concept of Single Piece Flow, a substantially more effective method for businesses to provide products and services. 

These concepts are based on significantly different ways of working and require new routines. These changes can only be undertaken by a leader who commits to the daily practice of these new routines. But oftentimes I see leaders reject new things just because of their fear of making mistakes. The wise however, mend their ways. 

When things go wrong in your business, are you guilty of always blaming your team? Blame is a common trait of humans and moreover humans under pressure! 

Every time you deflect the blame, you kick the problem further down the road. You’ll come across it again sometime soon! Instead, get to grips with the mistake and take responsibility for it. Once you take responsibility, you own the problem, you can take action to ensure it never happens again. 

When a team member makes a mistake the solution can usually be found in the answers to these four questions: What’s required to further define the expected solution? What are the missing tools? What resources are not immediately to hand? What are the missing ‘how-to’ steps? 

Once you start writing down the answers to these questions, for all the different things you do in your business, you’ll find that mistakes become less frequent. You’ll also be creating the Encyclopaedia of your business! 

Imagine you could clone yourself or even your best performing team member… your business would be totally awesome! You could delegate pretty much everything in the knowledge that it would get done perfectly! 

While we wait for cloning to become ethically acceptable, we’ll just have to make do with real people! The problem with real people occurs in the communication between you and them, the team members. Your assumptions and their assumptions combined, do a great job of screwing things up! Neither of you purposely set out to be negligent, you just both had different perspectives on how something should be done. 

You need a system that defines HOW you expect something to be done in your business. Once that exists you and your team can collaborate, using your own separate perspectives and formulate the single most effective method of how your products and services are delivered.

Are you fed up of the mistakes that you find others and you make in your business? When you find mistakes, you need to fix your business so that they don’t happen a second time.  

If we’re truly honest with ourselves, we know that only a systemised business has the mechanisms in place to achieve this. Historically those mechanisms have been policies, processes and procedures. Yeah, it’s a pretty boring prospect, sitting down and writing in Word or Powerpoint a how-to document that you know no one will really read! That’s why I think you should try using videos, and images with accompanying short snap description to record how your business does things. It’s fast to create and substantially more engaging. The greatest part is that to capture how you do things you can use your camera phone. 

You’re a business owner and I know that means that you’re missing out on something, and it pains you. Don’t let the chance pass by to return to the sport or activity that you used to be so passionate about, before you started your business. I’m guessing it was something that you were pretty good at, business owners tend to be quite good at lots of things!  

Oftentimes businesses are started as a result of the sport or activity that you were so passionate about. As time passes your participation reduces and the focus shifts to the demands of your customers. It seems like you have so many different things to do. Even if you have team members, they often need your help. These problems exist because you haven’t defined ‘how’ you what things to be done in your business. You might have told your team verbally, but that means that they don’t have anything to reference when you’re not around, and when you are around, it’s easier to just hassle you for answers.  

You need a systemised business. A systemised business works more easily without you. Documenting your business used to be a laborious process. However, with the prevalence of mobile devices, systemising your business is as simple as owning a camera phone. You can document tasks as you’re doing them. Shoot videos, take photos and attach short snap descriptions. This information can be compiled together to build an encyclopaedia of your business.