The cost of doing nothing!
I have to admit this blog will read more like an infomercial. I do apologise in advance.
Just last month a potential new client was asking me an interesting question.
She said: “Who is your biggest competitor?”
And without hesitation I said “doing nothing” – pause – “followed by doing it yourself”.
Her facial expression made clear that she’d expected a different answer, so I explained.
In my over 34 years of consulting to different businesses from different industries and different countries I’ve seen one common denominator across all areas – and that is sitting on your hands is blocking you from moving forward. Quite literally.
When it comes to workflow optimisation or more productivity we all fall into the trap of wishful thinking and then doing nothing. “Wouldn’t it be great to have this automated?” we ask ourselves and then we do it the manual way again and again.
Because we think we would waste time by trying to explain to someone what and why we are doing it. And surely we are so quick in doing it ourselves that we don’t add up all the 15 minutes of doing it ourselves.
So we keep doing what we have always done and every now and then we dream about a change, but rather do nothing. We put it into the “too hard” basket, or we tell ourselves that we don’t have time for it right now. And six months later we still haven’t taken a step forward.
What is “doing nothing” costing you?
It’s costing you time, energy, frustration, transparency and accuracy.
The ultimate costs are actually opportunity costs.
What would you be able to do with the time gained by automating repetitive tasks?
And if you are leading a team and you find your staff is falling into this trap, you are risking that your staff members are leaving mentally or physically because they want a more fulfilling job.
The cost of doing nothing in a nutshell:
– wasting time
– risk of errors
– staff frustration
– poor decision base
After I’ve explained this to her she totally got it and said: “You are absolutely right, I’ve never looked at it like this before. Thank you”.
It’s hard to really quantify the cost in dollar terms. You probably know best how much it is costing you to replace a good member of your staff, let alone the time it takes for a new person to get up to speed.
Waste of time is a bit easier. Just imagine you have two weekly tasks that would each take you 15 minutes. In other words, every two weeks you are spending a combined 60 minutes on just those tasks.
Per year that’s 26 hours or three full working days. Depending on your salary these three days could be worth between $1,500 and $4,500.
The bigger question here would be, how many more customers could you serve in those otherwise wasted 26 hours?
Please give me a call if you too want to systemise, structure and automate your workflow with German precision.
Whenever you are ready, here are three ways I could help you right now…
- You have an existing Excel – solution that does not do what it supposed to do. Here I can do a thorough assessment and audit of your model and give you recommendations for moving forward.
- You want to work privately with me to weave some magic into your workflow models that will allow you and your team to base your million dollar decision on the right data. Just email me to set up a time for a chat.
- You have an idea or a problem to solve and you don’t know where to start and want an honest, straight forward sounding board with business acumen and IT experience.