How to moveyour businessforward,without adding hours

Could putting out fires be what's wrecking you? “The mounting overload and overwhelm in an area comes entirely from cope-cope-cope without organizing also.” The effort goes into putting fires out, not into building.

And it costs you the product itself. Confusion is flow with no pattern: a lot of movement, and nothing goes out of the door. “To have a product something must flow OUT.”

As long as the effort goes into putting fires out, more hours and even another hire won't change that, because “we will also add confusion.” I once did very hard work myself, and my body was tired and my back hurt.

I worked at a bar. During one shift I held a 30-litre keg of beer, and my back locked up. I carried on with the shift, and nobody helped.

In the days after, I could do fewer things, and I didn't feel light and energetic the way I usually do. So I decided I had to work in a job that is more managerial and less physical. I'm not against hard work. I'm against “cope-cope-cope without organizing also.”

Axel Jedlitschka

Another hour and another hire address the quantity, not the direction. Battering at water is real work, and it is exhausting, but it does nothing. The way is to see your work as a flow: what comes in, what changes, what goes out, and where it stops. And for that you organise backwards, from the product.

1. 01The final product.Decide what leaves the business at the end, in the customer's words.
2. 02Work backwards.Which earlier products each step needs in order to get there.
3. 03The doing.What actually makes each one of them.
4. 04The names.Only now do you decide who does what.

“In a flood if you can channel the water, you can handle the flood. If you just batter at water you drown.”

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