Bill Gates said, "I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." What's a real-life example of this?
I was working as a stockboy in a supermarket and when we had to fill the milk cooler people would bust open a 12 pack of milk cartons and put them in one by one.
On my first day I just placed the 12 pack in the cooler and cut the plastic off on one side with my box cutter and yanked it from under it and the look of the store manager and the other employee who was training me was pure bewilderment.
From that day everyone did it my way.
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In my experience almost every job can get easier by taking a second to streamline tasks and/or stack functions.
Also in my experience, many people do things in a less than ideal manner because if they finish early and sit around for the rest of their shift, their manager will yell at them. I don't really know how to solve that problem.
As a manager it can be incentivized by not doing that…
Let them do it the effecient way and chill out at the end of the shift. Then, slowly ramp up the work your asking for until they have some time to fuck off still but productivity is up over all.
Everyone is happy that way
The only problem with your plan is that it requires thoughtful, intelligent managers who are capable of looking at the big picture. Managers like that are in short supply.
For too many managers, any free time is only seen as lost productivity… and if productivity isn’t possible, there’s always busywork. “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean”.
I mean, yeah. Trying to teach that lesson to the “kids” under me… under promise over deliver (a bit)
Give you people some time so that they can absorb unexpected issues without too much stress- which reduces quality- and keeps you from under delivering.
It also gives them unstructured time to tidy things up or whatever so they can be optimal
Also in my experience, many people do things in a less than ideal manner because if they finish early and sit around for the rest of their shift, their manager will yell at them.
The secret is to manage based on work output/completed vs ass in seat/constant productivity. If you only care about work output and quality, who cares if your employee is twiddling their thumbs if the job is done? An employee having idle time can be good to help them from feeling overworked.