Headroom

We all have two tasks:

The first task is to do the work: to answer customer queries, lay electric cables or to drill holes and fill teeth.  The first task is your day job, whatever you do for a living.

The second task is to do that day job better: to reduce downtime, remove obstacles or make things clearer and easier. To fix whatever is getting in the way.

Which task should you prioritise?

The first task always gets in the way of the second.  The first task is a time sink, customers are always shouting for something and if it isn’t your customers it is your colleagues.  The demands on your time never stop.

As for the second task, well it can be left until tomorrow, or the day after that.  The second task can wait.  It isn’t going anywhere without you.  And, let us be honest, it is a lot easier to reach for your phone and bang out a few e-mails, kidding yourself that you are being productive, than spend the time working out what needs to be improved.

The second task always slips.

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Is task two a waste of money?

If the demands of your inbox aren’t enough to push the second task out of the lime light then organisational demands will do it instead.  Many businesses are so cost obsessed that they miss the importance of task two altogether.  They screw down their labour loading so everybody is “100% occupied” leaving no time for staff members to do anything but chase after their day jobs.

Many organisations don’t waste money on task two.  What could your front line staff possibly know about improvement?  They should be working…

Headroom

The solution is obvious but hard.  Create some headroom.  Do something about task two, anything that will free up a little time.  Work late if you have to, just do it now.

• Move the printer closer to the desks
• Cut out an authorisation loop in your sign off process
• Put a shelf up so there is some space to sort out paperwork

Then, once you have ticked one thing off your task two list, tick off another and another.

A virtuous circle

As you create time, reinvest it.  Don’t squander it on more meetings and e-mails or give it up as a headcount saving, spend it on task two.  If you do that, then the available time will grow and your staff will see that you are genuine.  They will start to take the second task far more seriously as well.  Before you know it you won’t have to prioritise.

Create some head room.  Nobody else is going to do it for you.

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Image by Courtney Emery