The founder of a small consulting company Marks Group, Jean Marks, reflected on the topic of employment and found that it was enough to answer a simple question in order to understand, so much you or any other person are actually engaged. As a rule, the answer turns out to be negative: there are no busy people, when a million dollars are at stake.
Once we had a conditioning system, and I called the company that serves it. A good company, and a nice girl with whom I talked, promised to schedule a service call and contact me in an hour. The hour passed. Then the second. Finally, I called her myself. "Oh sorry. We've got hell, I've been so busy! ", She answered.
By that time the temperature in my house crawled to 30 degrees.
From time to time we have to contact our developers. Last month, we entrusted a small task to one guy from Florida, whose services we use. He always does everything very well, and he, like me, a fan of the series "Silicon Valley." Deadline he had until last Friday. Guess what: it is overdue. When on Friday I called him and asked him how things were with the project, he crumbled in apologies. "I was soooo busy! I promise, I'll do everything till the end of next week! ", He answered.
Our client is still waiting.
Do you want another story? Okay. I went to dine in a restaurant, and there are a lot of people there. The waiters rush between the tables like mad. In order to make an order, it takes forever, and then one more eternity you have to wait for you to take out food. Our waitress, very nice, very hardworking and very stuffed with tattoos on her chin, apologized for the long wait: "Our kitchen is so busy today!"
Well, at least the food was delicious.
Were all these people so busy? Of course. Are you very busy? I'm sure it is. You go to meetings and receive calls. Work on a new project or make an important proposal. Conduct an electronic correspondence and try to squeeze lunch into a tight schedule. Oh God, soon to go for the children, you need to take them out of school! You are busy, very, very busy. Too busy for everything. Besides, what is this nonsense - at all you are not really busy. Neither an air conditioning technical support employee, nor a developer from Florida, nor a waitress. Do you know why?
Imagine that I promised a girl from the conditioning company to give out a million dollars if she called me back in an hour. In cash. She could become a millionaire by making one phone call. Do you think she would not have called anyway?
And if I had promised a million dollars to the developer for keeping my deadline, do you think he would have continued to watch Silicon Valley instead of engaging in my project? Or called the waitress and promised a million if she would serve us out of turn?
These people were not so busy. And you, too, are not busy. Just everyone makes a choice. A girl from the company decided to close some other tasks first, instead of calling me, as she promised. The developer decided to execute other projects, and mine to postpone for later. And the waitress served someone instead of me. Each of them risked me angering or even losing a client, but it was their choice.
They are not wrong. They tried as best they could. The maximum. But being "too busy" is not the reason why I stopped being a priority for them. I ended up in a foreign affairs list, and there were things in it that needed to be resolved earlier than my questions. If I gave these people more motivation (for example, a million bucks), they would move me closer to the top of the list. And they just decided to ignore me.
Right now your employees are "busy", giving priority to tasks that may not be in priority with you. They can be "busy" by doing paper work or updating the database instead of responding to an urgent client request. They can be "busy" by helping a small client, while a large client waits in the waiting room, losing patience. They can be "busy" at a meeting that distracts them from their key responsibilities. The only way to cope with this problem is to lead, guide and organize the process, and be more involved in their day. Perhaps it is time to compare their priorities with their priorities. Your "employment" of this does not cancel.
Most likely, you understand that neither you nor your employees are "too busy". You all just make a choice. Are you the right choice? Just ask yourself a question about a million dollars, and the answer will become obvious.
Post created by @hrytsenko