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The Dripping Faucet in Every Organization

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Each day millions of workers spend 8 hours or more at their respective jobs with many contributing to the dripping faucet within every organization. This faucet much like the leaking kitchen or bathroom faucet’s steadily waste drops of a previous resource – water – every minute of every day until fixed. Yet, the dripping faucet is considered a minor annoyance until the drips become steadier. During this time, thousands of gallons of water are wasted costing the owner probably more money than it took to correct the problem.

Organizations also have dripping faucets not only in their physical plants, but within their people’s productivity. During the last 5 years, I have surveyed thousands of individuals who all believe that their plates are full, but admit to wasting a minimum of 12 minutes each day. For employees who are paid $30,000 not including benefits, this amounts to $14.42 each week for the one lost hour of work or $721.12 annually. If you have a facility with 50 people, the annual cost is at least $35,056. For organizations with at least 1,400 employees, the annual cost rises a minimum of $1,000,000. Dripping faucets are very expensive!

How can you repair this expensive drain on your limited resources? First, consider that most people don’t intentionally come to work to waste your resources. Their performance in many cases is a result of lack of knowledge and skills supported by negative attitudes and habits. These negative attitudes and habits probably contribute much more to their performance.

Second, begin to ask questions about how the organization is communicating its message. If you were to survey 10% of your employees from upper, middle and front line levels and asked them to name the top 3 goals of the organization, would you receive the EXACT SAME ANSWER from each individual. Different responses contribute to people not knowing what they may need to do next and contribute to that ongoing dripping faucet.

Third, determine if your employees truly understand how to plan and achieve their personal goals. If your employees are achieving their personal goals, the likelihood of them achieving corporate goals has been greatly enhanced. Time management is the apex of goal planning and achievement. If individuals don’t have goals, then why worry about time?

Fourth, as you train your employees include interpersonal development along with the job specific skills. If your company promotes from within, the individual is recognized for her or his job specific skills. However, as these individuals moved up through the organization, job specific skills become less while interpersonal skills become greater. Yet, much of the training fails to develop these individuals and the result is that these individuals leave which increases bottom line costs or return to their original position again increasing bottom line costs.

Five, finally, think about the words that you select. For example, ask your employees how they are investing their time instead of spending their time? Frame your questions and statements using positive words that generate powerful mental images. People hear words, but they think in pictures.

Six, align your systems, strategies and people to create loyal internal customers that discover those “moments of truth” leading to external customers. Southwest Airlines understands the power of alignment.

These are just 6 ideas that will help you begin to repair your dripping faucets. So, grab the toolbox and begin to create a culture that does not support wasting your resources, but instead looks to invest them. Remember, the faucet continues to drip and this is very expensive.

 

A large part of any effective IT organization is communication – especially communication within your organization. And although you may be presenting the same or a similar message to everyone, it’s important to consider your audience and tailor the message accordingly. Ignore this at your peril and risk having your important email end up unread in the Deleted Items folder.

A few things to consider when putting together your message:

1. Always think of what motivates your audience. Write or speak with the thought “What’s in it for them?”. For example, if you’re talking to the sales department, you’ll want to focus on how the change will help them sell more product, meet their quotas and get their bonuses. If you’re talking to the executive team, you’ll want to focus on how the change will save or make the company more money.
2. Consider what type of thinker you’re talking to. There are typically 3 levels of thinkers in any organization:

   Type of Thinker	What They Think About	How Far Out They’re Thinking
   Strategic	Policies	2-5 years ahead
   Tactical	Process	6-24 months ahead
   Operational	Procedures	0-6 months ahead

   For example, if you’re talking to a strategic audience (i.e. the executive), think about the ramifications what you’re proposing will have on the company in the next 2-5 years. Will this make us a recognized market leader? Will it put us in a good position for an expanded product line? If you’re talking to the business unit level managers, will it mean we can focus less on day to day problems and more on research and development? If you’re talking to the customer service representatives, how this will help them streamline problem resolution?
3. Remove the technical jargon and speak or write in layman’s terms. Have someone typical of your target audience read any written communication prior to it going out. Concepts that are perfectly clear to you may be clear as mud to someone in a different role.
4. Anticipate objections like a sales person does when their trying to sell a product to a customer:

   “Not able to pay the entire amount now? No problem, we can put you on a payment plan.”
   “It doesn’t do xyz? Have you considered doing that a different way and using the abc feature?”

   What? You say you’re horrible sales person? Tough. Learn how. We’re all trying to sell something, whether it be an idea, a proposal, a project or a product. This skill will serve you well no matter what role you’re in.

Thanks to my ITIL instructor, Barry Brown, for the ideas and thoughts for this post! For more information about ITIL training and ITIL certification, check out Pink Elephant’s website.

Ruth Morton
IT Pro Advisor

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