The tools I need

I bought a new chainsaw a few weeks ago. For those that know me, you know that’s a really weird statement. Why? Well, because I have no idea what I am doing with a chainsaw. But I do know that I have a pile of branches that need to be cut down and taken care of. The good news is that I have a really solid game plan. I know that if I can get them cut up into smaller pieces, I can get them into the truck and take them to the local burn pile. I also know that I have been putting this off as long as possible, so this needs to be taken care of as soon as possible. Why do I bring all of this up? Well, I tried taking care of this with the wrong chain saw. It took me a really long time and I pretty much got nowhere. So, I had to stop and reevaluate what I was doing. A job that felt completely impossible, now feels very doable and in a lot of ways, I’m excited to get started. I don’t really like being outside, I’m not good at using a chainsaw, but I’m excited because I know what specific job I must do, and I have the right tools to complete the job. That is the main point for today’s post. If you give me a specific task to do, and you give me the tools to do the job, even if the job doesn’t fall into one of my strengths, I’m excited! That is how I feel most people think at work. Give me a job, give me the tools and I will gladly jump in and get it done. The sad part is that we sometimes struggle with just giving them a specific job. So, we give them an unclear task, then we don’t give them all the tools they need, then we can’t figure out why we aren’t as productive as we need to be. So, the first thing I need to start doing is to give clear tasks. After that, do they have tools that they need to do their job? I also need to realize that if I have the right tools, I get excited to do a task that I don’t even really want to do. That means that the opposite might be true. I might actually be excited to do a task, but if you don’t give me the right tools, I’m going to shut down and not even want to do it. All momentum is lost, and all excitement to do a good job is gone. How much time is wasted while we think about how to complete a job without the right tools? How much production is lost to lack of motivation to get the job done? I also worry about the expectations we put on people while not making it a priority to see if they have what they need.  How do I make sure that a task is clear? It would seem to me that a task is clear when I am clear on what the finished product looks like. If I am supposed to take out the trash, I know the task is complete when the full trash is in the trash can outside and I have a brand-new bag in the trash can inside. I know that the laundry is done when the dryer is empty, and the clothes are put away. Next, I need to focus on how long the task should take. Every man who has taken too long to take out the trash knows that his significant other had a time frame for the task of taking out the trash to be completed. There is a very big difference between five minutes real time and five minutes left in a football game. So, if I say that I will take out the trash in five minutes, everyone will know that the new bag should be in the trash can ten minutes later. When we have a specific task with an unclear time of completion, we run the risk of Parkinson’s Law. What is Parkinson’s Law? It’s the idea that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. So, if I give you the specific task of writing an article every week for a really cool website, then I tell you that it needs to be done by Monday morning at 8:00am, some people will always be rushing to finish it at 7:45am. At work we do the same thing, we tell them something needs to be done by the end of the shift, some people take one hour to complete it, others take all eight hours. Now I have given someone a specific task and a timeframe, do I just assume they have the tools they need, or do I ask them? Why is it that we always just assume that they either have the tools they need, or they will ask if they don’t? We gave them the task, so they assumed that we knew what they needed, or that we gave them everything we had available to help them. So, they go off and start working, even though they don’t have what they need. They bad mouth us while they try to do a job with the wrong tools, and we sit in an office and wonder why something isn’t getting done. One reason I think we struggle in this area is because sometimes I think we don’t know what tools they need and so we don’t ask. But now we know what we need to do to be as productive as possible, we need to give a clear task, give a specific timeframe, and make sure they have the tools they need to do the job. I challenge everyone to spend a week trying to do this and see what happens. The biggest thing to try and look at, do they seem more motivated to do the job?