I was in my "book club" today when it turned into a bi**h fest. Imagine the day after a 3 day weekend and 3 of the members "words" were "frustrated"
This got me thinking of a book actually worth reading, The One Thing by Gary Keller (founder of Keller Williams) - famously for saying “What's the ONE Thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
I realized for sometime what that is and it's not being addressed -
Productivity
Hear me out.
It's staggering to see the absolute squandering of time, man hours, number of people it takes to get anything done. Simple things taking days, weeks, months, years!
It's not an exaggeration to say possibly 1000s of examples could be collected in a survey. So why is it this way?
Well - my 2 cents is that it falls in a few areas
- Beholden to Wall St
Too scared to show a negative quarter to take money and invest in tangible changes that will impact front line employees work experience (many listed below)
Well...shouldn't be that scared of the stock price anymore! Maybe...it's time to try something radically different? Or "Be Bold" as our once firce leader would have said 😅
- Tools
The lack of integration from the countless systems of countless acquisitions has caused cilos of expertise in certain tools and "colors". Simply nothing has migrated to a concise set of tools to make life easy and in turn, productive. So many times are people trying to do day to day tasks only to have to open an IT ticket because it hasnt been patched or they stopped development for the tool, etc. Things only keep changing, adding, going back to old tools, not updating day to day tools, this area is falling apart at the seems
- Process
The countless aquired companies and lack of tool intergration combined with broken processes and people exodus who were "the go to" person who is no longer here makes this area a disaster. The countless products inve toried and processed in disperate systems and tools makes it an impossible job. But "follow the process" you say, great can the documentation be accurate and links not broken? And thanks for letting people know the process changed (sarcasm)!
- Training & Staffing
Is there any? I mean this as a serious question...actually. Things are changing SOO MUCH and as I harping above, there really needs to be MANDATORY trainings to keep up. Culturally this needs to be put very high on the list, every employee aware of changes up and coming, trained in those changes, understands WHY those changes are happening and how it improves productivity, makes life better. If it makes the job harder, that sh*t has got to go
- Raises, Recognition of Reality and Treating people with compassion (like you supposedly claim we are all learning with this book club)
Ok...I can't believe I read people have not gotten a raise in 7 years and are still here..even if we follow the CPI (which I am not a fan of, I believe the Chapwood Index or Shadow Stats is much more accurate), just doing a search from Jan 2013 to Jan 2023 inflation calculation, from the BLS website, that time period has seen a 30% inflation!!!! (See below)
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100&year1=201301&year2=202301
So....you need $130 to purchase the same goods as $100
Do you not think....employees are hurting economically due to this as a REALITY to their day to day life?
Honestly this imo is actually a low calculation, I don't want to scare anyone with my analysis of real inflation before the 1980s changes that the BLS did...but it's just a crazy time for folks economically and it's been compounding. I digress
SLT...your employees feel this and feel left behind. This is REAL. Some have voted with their feet rightfully so. Others are loyal in nature or have their own reasons to stay. The non merit increases are a bunch of bullsh*t when your executives were making 10s of millions while rifs were happening the same year. No souls.
This should be looked at immediately
- My closing thougts
I think you should focus on "The One Thing" and focus on everything that makes life easier for the employee, empowers the employee and keeps a healthy economic well being and compensation that matches the reality of current macro economics.
In turn you will receive productivity the likes this company hasn't seen in ages, and the buttom line will show for this change. The book is nice, fix this first.