hard work

What Does Busy Look Like?

Everyone is busy. Our brains have a hard time doing nothing. So, there's a tendency to fill the ebbs of time with something. When we're at work, being busy is tied to being productive in the service to someone else. The rest of the time, busy takes on a different persona. There's the business of doing chores, taking care of personal business and generally getting things done. This is the stuff we've told ourselves is more important than something else. So, we make ourselves feel productive by doing it. And on the measurement of pure activity, we've accomplished something. But, at what expense? What's the cost of doing one thing over another?

It's easy to fall into the trap of merely doing something to feel productive...because it's safe. It's safe because it's predictable. But the truly important work, the work which can change our lives and those around us, is hard. It's hard because it might not work. It's hard because we might fail. But, the hard work really matters.

Too often we put the hard things off. We rationalize doing them later when conditions are more suitable or we have more time...perhaps tomorrow. Of course, we might be busy tomorrow. Or perhaps, tomorrow doesn't come?

Most of what we call busy work is easy. But, we need more of the hard. Maybe we should get busy doing the hard work instead. Spend five minutes doing the hard thing each day, before doing anything else. At least it's a start.

Wir Geben Uns Mehr Mühe

Translated...We Try Harder.

I first heard this proclamation in my high school German class. It was the slogan of the car rental company, Avis. This was quite paradoxical since I was taking the class precisely because I wouldn't need to work harder (it was an easy way for me to get an A since I was already fluent in the language). But, lost in the translation was the profound nature of the point they were making. They didn't promise to be the best car rental company, have the best selection, the lowest prices or even the friendliest service. They simply stated they would try harder, implying they would give more effort. The focus was on trying, on approaching the work with more vigor...not the outcome. In this example, the extended effort directly benefited the customer. This implies a focus on the soft skills (real skills). I'm not sure how they measured this effort. I didn't care enough at the time to look into it...couldn't be bothered.

It's challenging to measure the results of trying harder, especially when it comes to non technical skills. How can we tell if more smiles translate into more sales? How do we know if being more approachable and caring for another person's feelings is serving our goals? The key is to first define our purpose and what  success looks like. How do we know when we tried harder? Does the recipient smile, tell us so, tell other people so, hug us, laugh and do a dance? The more specific we can be here, the more we can point to it and clearly say, people here try harder so we can make this happen. Of course, we need other guideposts to keep us pointed in the right direction. We need reminders like the one I saw at Zappos so many years ago. They had one number posted on the wall in the call center, how long it took for a human to answer the phone. They knew this was key to making the caller happy...which is ultimately what they cared most about. This was their "try harder" measurement for that group of employees. And, it was the only one. I found no others...and I asked. Zappos generated nine billion dollars in annual sales at that time.

Too often we get caught up in the measurements of the things easiest to measure, like profit and productivity. The harder work is to find ways to measure the levers which actually accomplish the change we seek to make.