More Leadership Lessons from Moving

While we’ve made the move from our old offices to our new offices successfully, there are still a ton of things to do to bring order to our world.  I’ve also got a few leadership lessons learned in my back pocket.  They are:

• Throw stuff out. Quit hauling non-essential things.  If you don’t use it, lose it.  Focus.  Spend your energy working the essentials.  Stop consuming your life space with non-essential, negative side stuff, activities,  and (shock) people.  Every person is valuable.  But, some people work hard at destroying the value in others.  Leader beware.  Know who is essential and work like the devil to protect and develop those people.
• Consolidate. Every leader should be required to wait tables.  I first learned consolidation in that arena.  I relearned it this week.  Don’t make 5 trips.  Consolidate and make 1 or 2.  Think through your process.  It is hard work.  But, it honors people, time, and makes you more productive in the long run.  Of course, if working unnecessarily hard assuages your guilt, then by all means, continue not thinking through your processes in advance.
• Take a break to have fun in the middle of the hard work. Work hard.  Play hard.  When you’ve led people hard, take a great break and have a blast. Wednesday night after the move, all the guys and gals hit this awesome taco shop downtown called “La Cruzada Taqueria.”  I went home and collapsed.  The last thing I remember though were the jokes, stories, and flaming sauces we were daring each other to eat.  Looking back, this has been on of the longest weeks of the year…also the funnest.
• Compete. If you want to be productive, compete.  Tell a young kid that you can load 3 boxes to his 1.  You’ll load the truck faster.  Double your productivity by telling everyone working that they’re a bunch of girls.  Quadruple your productivity by pointing out the workhorse.
• Hire people to do it for you. If you cannot afford the time interruption or do not value the team building aspects of doing it yourself or if you do not have the expertise to do it yourself, hire someone to do it for you.  There is a lot of upside to outsourcing as you will soon see with our new website (soon…I promise).  However, expect things to be broken at a great rate because hired hands don’t appreciate how you’ve had to sweat, bleed, and skimp for your stuff.  At the same time, you can demand excellence.  If they don’t perform, you can cut them free and withhold money while severing a short term, low investment relationship.  You cannot do that so easily with close, high-investment, personal relationships.
• Don’t hire people to do it for you. Outsourcing may maximize your time and productivity.  But, it may not foster relationship, learning, team, or growth.  If you can afford the downtime associated with learning and interruption, go for it.  You’ll bond to people, create loyalty, ownership, cast vision, and get to know people on a level you wouldn’t otherwise.  You’ll also impart and gain knowledge that you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.  The key is to know when to do it yourself and when not to.  If you don’t have and can’t muster the expertise internally, don’t even think about it.