Stay— and let others stay— in their lane

Last year I consulted for a local ministry. They were prepping to launch a new small group curriculum, as well as level-up their online presence. 

“Our video guy is good,” a member of the executive staff told me, “but he’s so slow.”

Another concurred, “He takes weeks— even months— to complete projects. I can’t figure it out. He always seems like he’s moving at a turtle’s pace.”

I sat down with the videographer as part of my onboarding process and said, “Tell me about your schedule. Outline what an average week looks like around here for you.”

What he said about them

Notice, I didn’t ask him why he was slow— why it took him so long to produce his content. I simply inquired about the regular workflow. 

“On Mondays we have classes,” he said. “I have to manage the classrooms. That means I get here, set up everything, and then sit in the room while class is going…”

I interrupted him and asked, “Is that part of your job description?”

“No, I was initially asked to do it and fill-in for a bit when the person who was doing it left,” he said. “I’m not complaining about it, but it does take a lot of time. Those classes are over around noon, but then I’ve got to reset the room and prep it for the evening classes. My morning’s are over around 12:30. Then I take lunch…”

“How much time do you have between lunch and the evening class?”

“I have to set up for that class around 5:00pm,” he said. “So, I have from around 1:30 to 5:00– about 3.5 hours.”

“What about the other days?”

“They’re all the same— Monday through Thursday. We’re closed on Friday.”

“So you have just over 3 hours each day to perform the duties that are on your actual job description?”

“Yeah… well… not really. We have a 2-hour staff meeting on Thursdays.” 

“Two hours!?”

“Yeah. I feel like we sometimes— a lot of times— talk about things in there, too, that don’t pertain to the entire staff. And it’s not like people in one department are informing everyone else about something that’s coming up. It’s more like they’re discussing things and making little decisions that could probably better be done in their departments… and then just share those decisions with the group when everyone comes together.”

“So you’re telling me that you have just over 3 hours to work on 3 days and then about 1 or 2 hours to work on another day…?”

“Pretty much.”

"Houston, we have a problem..." (and it's not what we thought)

I quickly assessed a few more issues I saw which were preventing him from editing the videos everyone was waiting for. At this point, he only had 10 hours a week  available in his schedule to work on anything at all. 

Then I uncovered a few more layers… 

First, he was required to upload the replays of each class into the website— so students could view the replays. Though that task did clearly fall in his job description, it required about 4 hours a week to manage this and do it well. I’d done it a few times in order to pen the processes so we had a written system; therefore, I knew from personal experience. This left him with 6 hours to work.

Second, as the youngest person on staff— and the only one with any tech experience at all— he was routinely grabbed by everyone else to fix their emails, help them reset passwords, reconnect them to the printer… or even run errands on behalf of the ministry. This accounted for another 3-4 hours per week, leaving him a max of 2-3 available hours on the average week to focus on the very thing he was actually hired to do.

Let's assess it

He was “slow at his job,” in other words, because he didn’t have any protected time to create the content which the ministry said was valuable— so valuable they hired him full time to do it.

A week later, I met with the executive director and shared my observation.

“He doesn’t have any time to do his job,” I explained. “That’s why he’s slow.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Take some of those menial tasks off him, and place them on the intern that’s sitting at her desk, eagerly wanting something meaningful to do. Let her manage the classrooms— she’s great with people. And let him get back to doing what you actually pay him to do.”

Lessons from juggling

I told the executive director about juggling— and how I develop the concept, comparing it to all the tasks we manage— in my Advance book.

“When you juggle,” I said, “The stuff you’re juggling— tennis balls or bowling pins or whatever— actually spend more time out of your hands than they do in your hands.”

“That’s true,” he said. “I’ve never actually thought about it like that, but you’re right. When you’re juggling, you can’t hold onto anything very long or you start dropping things.”

“That’s what the videographer has been doing here. You’ve got him juggling things that aren’t tasks he even needs to touch. It’s not that they’re not important— or that he’s above them. Rather, it’s that those things are so important, as are things you’ve hired him to do, that you need to make sure someone has enough bandwidth to do each of them properly.” 

It comes down to focus

You can walk outside, right now,  in the middle of the day, and the sun’s rays won’t harm you. Sure, if you remain outside for a few hours in the middle of the summer, you’ll get tan, but you’ll be fine. 

At the same time, you can carry a magnifying glass outside, focus the same rays through the glass, and set grass on fire. Then, you can grow the flame into a blaze, effectively making it as large as you’d like. 

That’s the power of focus. This same focus— in 3 hour-blocks each week, saves me 2 or more hours of time each day. That is, a 3-hour window of focus helps me do what I would struggle to in 10 hours if those hours are smattered throughout the week.

Reserve the space you need to make the magic happen.  In an upcoming series, I’ll talk more about some of the processes I use during my time blocks. The fist step, however, is to block that time as we've discussed in this series.

Need help in this area? 

Go to www.Jenkins.tv/8. Pay $8 and I’ll send you a paperback version of the planner I use— the one I created. I’ll also provide you with free access to the audiobook so you can short-cut some of the time-saving hacks I’ve learned.