Why is my Report not done??
As Anton realised that he has woken up before his alarm has gone off, he was, a little bit angry at himself “How much longer could I have slept…”
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
As he was reaching for the closest time keeper and it seemed that he had woken up just in time, which wasn’t strange because Anton was always a very routined person and would almost to the second be able to keep to this schedule, 6:00 wake up; 6:10 start brewing coffee; 6:20 shower; 6:45 get dressed; 7:00 eat breakfast, drink coffee, read newspaper; 7:30 leave for work; 8:00 arrive at work… But being this fixed has its own draw backs.
“It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.” - John Steinbeck
What if the coffee was finished or the newspaper wasn’t delivered on time, how would Anton be able to keep to his routine when certain things in his life depended on others?
Anton was, to be honest, not an important person… he was a mid-level manager at a paper factory where he had 3 other employees working in his “team”.
Day in and day out “Morning Jill, anything fun happen last night?”, “Hi John, how are the kids?”, “O Hey Jeffrey, have you finished the statistic report yet?” … always the same… Check emails, do a stock take, prepare reports for management… day in and day out… sales are down, we need to grow into another geography, we should make some new paper, one that they would like… always the same… the only thing that varied daily – the time that Anton left the office.
Most days Anton would not leave on time from the office, as he always felt that there was something that wasn’t completed yet, an email that has not been read, a meeting that hasn’t been booked or a report that hasn’t been finished yet. Being the tech savvy, intellectually routined person that Anton is, he had a filing system that functioned like a dream, everything in its place, well organised. So he would do the report himself but… sometimes he would look for something and it would not be where he left it. Why is Jeffrey not doing his job?
One day, Anton realised that there was a reason to why he never left work early, he was not using his team correctly. He never gave a job to Jill because he thought that she is too young and would not do it exactly as he would like it. He never asked John for any help because he was a grandfather and always seemed so tired. Poor Jeffrey, because Anton was lenient on the other two it was left to Jeffrey to pick up all the slack which made him… late with his report. What Anton didn’t realise was that Jeffrey was one of the companies’ hardest workers, he arrived every morning at 7:00 and never left before 18:00 because he was trying to impress his boss… Anton.
Anton quickly realised that he would need to change the way that he was working and how he was communicating with his team, and that Jeffrey needed a raise…
He found people that are experts at productivity and efficiency @ Priority Management and asked that they come and help him and his team to make the changes, revamp their behaviour and ultimately make them a better team.
