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Subject: Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor?

Author: Dennis S. Vogel

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 01:02:08 09/20/09 Sun In reply to: Hillary 's message, "I'm confused about Nascent Processes" on 15:30:15 03/12/09 Thu Doing entry-level & intermediate tasks occasionally may be a good idea to maintain your skill level & show employees you don’t feel high & mighty. While you do entry-level & intermediate tasks, you may discover a better alternative. It’s especially true, if you haven’t done it everyday. You can explore the task from a different perspective. Workers may have good ideas about how to make processes better. Since they don’t have your perspective, you may disregard what they suggest. No matter how tempting it may be to ignore them or feign interest in their insights, don’t act like you’re including them just to mollify them or get them to buy into your plan. They could suggest something (big or small) that’ll improve your process. I advise you not to automatically disregard what seems like a little change. If a change saves you $1, you could save $1 every time the changed process is used. Saving $1 implies not losing $1 each time. The savings or losses could total in the hundreds or thousands. Should A Boss Do Employee Level Processes Or Just Design Processes? There’s an opportunity cost when a business owner isn’t doing administrative & strategic planning work. In general, business owners may produce more profit by developing methods, then letting others test them. Time spent doing a process isn’t available for designing a process. Realistically, time spent doing a process is a way to achieve goals & evaluate a process. Doing a process helps a boss understand it. Note: You should realize there’s a big difference between doing a task for your business & working for somebody else (like employees working for you). If you’ve been employed by somebody else, you probably didn’t feel the control & satisfaction you get now being self-employed. Some people advise bosses to occasionally do what they expect employees to do. Some rationales are: 1) setting a good example; 2) knowing how to do the tasks means a boss knows what the experience is like; 3) showing workers a boss is willing to do what s/he expects them to do. The second rationale is partially false. Doing a task, even if a person has years of experience doing it, doesn’t mean a person knows everything about it. There can be a different variable or set of variables each time for each person. Example- When I was in the US Navy, some petty officers figured they knew exactly what it was like to do various jobs. Most of them were no taller than 5’ 10’’. At the time, I was 6’ 4”. (By the time I got out of the Navy, I was 6’3” with a curved spine. ) Having to bend for hours to do a job (because the overheads/ceilings were too low for me) & walking in passage ways (halls) is a factor they didn’t experience, nor care about. Having been shorter when I was younger, I had some experiences of being a shorter person, but I knew my experiences were different than theirs. (Being a 5’10” 14-year-old is different than being a 5’10” 40-year-old.) Commissioned & petty officers didn’t all want to acknowledge how much difference 6 or more inches (compared to them) could make for me. Could they have gotten better results from me if they would’ve acknowledged banging my head &/or bending lower was hurting me? Yes. If they didn’t know, it was because they didn’t want to know. I reminded them very often. Could they have gotten better results from me if they engaged a couple more of their brain cells? Yes. Did some of them get better results from me eventually? Yes. They were surprised when 1 of my work evaluations was much better than the previous evaluations. When they wanted to know why, I told them, “Because the guy (the supervising petty officer) who wrote that treated me like a human being.” He was shorter than me, but he still didn’t confine me to a low area. But I still had other low areas to contend with. For a touch of empathy, imagine living in a metal pipe that has a diameter 3 inches less than your height. You can’t stand or walk any straighter because you can’t put your head through the metal, so your back stays unnaturally bent too much of each day. How long do you think it’d take for your back muscles to chronically spasm & bone spurs to grow on your vertebrae. Employees’ experiences while working for you can literally--positively or negatively--change they’re lives. How well could you do their jobs if you had their limitations & were still subject to your same expectations? I'm not advising you to feel sorry for anybody. But when somebody works for you, you'll probably get better results when you use some intelligent empathy. You’ll always experience--what seem to be--the same situations differently than others. We’ve Been There, Done That But It Was Different For Each I’ve worked in ship’s stores (Navy), plus big & small civilian stores. I understand various situations from my perspective. I won’t try to deceive others or myself by implying I know exactly what retailers experience. Do Or Dichotomy Business owners need to balance many dichotomies, among them are: 1) design a process & have others test it while s/he (the owner) works on another process; or 2) design a process & test it before training somebody else to do it. A creative person can design hundreds of processes in the time required to perfect each process. But what good are hundreds of imperfect processes without anybody who has time to use them? If somebody only designs or maps processes, but doesn’t do or use any of them, how could s/he understand what many of the possible problems are & how to avoid or solve them? If you have a big enough staff, a person or team can test a process while the others use your current processes. If everybody would stop doing what’s been working & does what might work, productivity & customer satisfaction may drop. Reality Check: You can design & map (diagram) a “process”, but until somebody tests & uses it successfully, your “process” is just a theory of what may achieve a goal. Even if a process worked for somebody else in a different situation, your 1st attempt--in your situation--will be a test. Though you may be able to design many “processes”, they won’t be productive until they're used. So, you’ll probably need to be involved in physically testing & perfecting some processes. Dennis S. Vogel thrivingbusiness@email.com You can only have a thriving business if you consistently do what consumers will consistently pay for. You can find some advice you need by using these URLs. http://www.lakefield.net/~thrivingbusiness/ http://www.voy.com/31049/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Re: Should A Boss Occasionally Do Nonexecutive Labor?	Cris	18:56:09 09/20/09 Sun
You're Right. Accuracy Is Always Vital. -- Dennis S. Vogel, 22:14:15 09/21/09 Mon