The Chicken and the Egg

I’ve spent many years doing IT support for many different high-output and high-demand businesses. These days, they rely on their computer systems like they rely on electricity and coffee. Generally speaking, with a technology failure, business stops and everyone is rather peeved.

A few trends became apparent very quickly in my travels.

1. They’re busy. The staff, the managers, the owners, all very busy.
2. The systems they use are critical. Things must keep working smoothly, without hiccups. Every hiccup costs money.
3. They want to spend as little time as possible doing anything other than the core focus of the business.
4. They use their technology all the time, hands on, without any real breaks. Lunch is often eaten at their desks.
5. Tension can run very high, especially near deadlines.
6. Significant stress, annoyance, and frustration occur when they are thwarted in trying to accomplish certain tasks.
7. People of all different technological proficiency levels appear to feel similarly busy, and even stressed, when interacting with their systems. What I mean by that: If we could measure the feeling of stress from 1-10, usually the staff in high-output businesses operate between 7 and 10 regardless of their respective technological proficiency level.
8. The actual revenue-generating output of any staff member is not necessarily proportional to how busy or stressed they might feel. What I mean by that: If I feel busy and stressed to about level 8, that does not necessarily mean I will have correspondingly high output.
9. No one wants training, most often because they feel like they don’t have time.

I think it’s safe to say every business owner wants to build value in their business. To me, building value means:

• Generating as much revenue as possible for the business.
• Staff are as happy and productive as possible, fairly rewarded for their results.
• Processes and systems are evolving smoothly, building a more efficient revenue-generating machine.
• The business is growing safely and organically, as quickly as possible.

Some questions to think about (and I encourage you to slow down a bit to give each question some thought):

1. What is the team creating in terms of value-building results, with their sometimes stressed efforts?
2. Is it possible to feel busy, to look busy, but to not actually build value in the business? IE: Does feeling busy always equal productive and revenue-generating results?
3. Does the user always push the technology to its processing speed limit? Does the speed of the system hold the person back?
4. Or does the person put forth a lot of effort to use the system at a fraction of its processing potential?

If we assume that effective training in technology can decrease the feeling of stress and increase value-building output:

1. Why would a person NOT want any training, instead choosing ongoing stress and busyness with low or medium output?
   Hint: There is a good reason for this, otherwise everyone would seek training urgently.  😉
2. Do you know anyone who has high value-building output, working very effectively with their technology, while also appearing to feel happy and relaxed?
3. What’s their secret?
   Hint: It’s not the coffee.

My take on this dynamic in the workplace:

We generally get caught up in the moments, firefighting or reacting/responding, handling issues as they come up. The thought of stopping that flow to do some training seems like a dangerous interruption of business, which can seem like a bad move if we want to keep our customers and stakeholders happy.

I believe the term “adrenaline junkie” is not just for cliff jumpers and motorcycle racers. I think most business people, and in fact most people, are “adrenaline junkies” to some degree.

If we look at motivation, it is an interesting study. I am highly motivated and incredibly productive in high stress situations. I love to firefight, and I love to be a resource (see: hero) in times of high stress. If I have an opportunity to resolve a crisis, I will take it and relish it.

I might feel like if there isn’t a crisis to handle, I’d lose my motivation. I might lose my mojo. If I pause business to do some training, I might lose money and lose the client.

What if that’s not true?

The switch from reactive firefighting to proactive training and value building is a tough one, and a slower evolutionary process. The reason we love firefighting so much is we feel powerful and capable.

Training generally gives us the opposite feeling. Suddenly we’re weak and ineffective. In the beginning. Just like the first few trips to the gym.  😉

So. How does that all relate to “I don’t have time for training”?

What if it only took about 1.5hrs of training to shave off 5 minutes of inefficiency per day, forever? Would it be worth it?

There’s something better than the adrenaline rush of feeling busy while firefighting: the feeling of efficiently cutting through your daily workload with the ease that can only be achieved through consistent and effective technology training.