Fowler & Company
cfowler@valuesdrivenresults.com
You Are Herbie
Unfortunately, so am I.
Herbie is the overweight scout slowing down the troop in Eliyahu Goldratt’s excellent book, “The Goal.”
“The Goal” explains a complicated thing called the theory of constraints to the non-engineer crowd. The book shows us how one constraint, in this case Herbie, can slow down an entire organization, or scout troop.
Almost every leader I meet is the Herbie of their organization. They are the restrictor plate holding back the speed of the organization’s growth. Like Herbie they are carrying too heavy a weight. That weight is slowing them down and thus slowing down the growth of the entire organization.
It is very difficult for most leaders to see that they are the constraint holding up the growth of their organization. As leaders, we have all sorts of reasons why our growth is not what it should be. We need better people. We need more capital.
Better people and more capital are not true constraints. There are plenty of talented people in this world, and there is more capital looking for a good investment than any time in history.
Think about it. If your primary constraint is the need for a key leader or capital, you can fix that problem given the right amount of time and resources. Yet, you don’t have the time. How do you fix this problem so you can take the lid off the growth of your organization?
You’ve got to take some stuff out of your backpack. How well are you serving your team if you are limiting everyone’s growth?
You are doing a lot of work that is not the most important work that needs to be done to move your organization forward. I help my clients take a hard look at what they are carrying in their backpacks. They are many activities that should not be done, others that need to be delegated, and some that should be outsourced. Here is how the process works.
Dump Your Backpack
You’ve got to get every task that you carry around each week, month, and year out on the ground. This requires you take a hard look at your schedule and where your time is spent. This will require you to do a time audit and enlist the help of your executive assistant, your spouse, and the people who work for you and that you work for.
We are all at least a little self-delusional. We all suck in our guts when we go past the mirror. You’ll need some honest input from those closest to you to get an accurate read on where your time is spent.
Categorize Your Junk
Your backpack should only contain the essentials for your journey. If you’ll be crossing a stream on day two, why carry five days of water? There are better solutions.
In work world, we are all carrying tasks and activities that are not the highest and best uses of our time. I ask my clients to categorize their activities into four buckets:
Tasks You Don’t Like Doing: Dump any tasks that you dislike into this bucket.
Tasks You Don’t Do Well: Or tasks that someone else can do better. When you do these items, you are not playing to your strengths. The weird thing is that someone (inside or outside of your organization) loves and specializes in these tasks. They play to their strengths. They should be doing these tasks.
Tasks You Shouldn’t Do: These are the tasks that every time you get into them, you ask yourself “Why in the world am I doing this?” This bucket will include tasks from the first two buckets.
Tasks Only You Can Do: What are the things that only you can do? Again, you’ll need input from those around you. We often delude ourselves into believing that there are a lot of tasks that fall into this bucket, but the list should be very short. If you had the right people and the right systems, what could you take off your plate?
Now, work with your team to determine how to take the unnecessary load (tasks) out of your backpack. What can you stop doing? What can be delegated? What can be outsourced? Pick the item that is the easiest to get off your plate. Create a small win.
Take the time you create and focus it on your organization’s single, most important constraint. Fix that one before you move on the next constraint. You will unlock the growth of your organization one constraint at a time.
And don’t worry. Herbie and his scout troop made it to their destination right on time. They just had to lighten the load in his backpack!
Have a business growth topic you’d like me to cover? Send suggestions to cfowler@valuesdrivenresults.com.