On a late summer day, a man was walking along the street on his way home to his family. It was the end of the working day and an evening of other activities. He did not look happy, but more worn and tired. He stopped at an open manhole. Strange, no barrier, he thought. He looks down into the well and thinks he sees something glittering at the bottom. – Doesn’t that look like a Rolex watch, he says to himself half aloud. It might be worth taking the ladder that sits on the side of the well down, to check it all out. So he takes and carefully climbs down to the almost dry bottom of the well. The last bit he has to let go of the ladder, because it doesn’t go all the way down. Down at the bottom he sees that the glowing thing was indeed a bell, but it’s just a cheap copy. He can see that clearly when he examines it a little closer. Best to head for home, he thinks, but soon finds he can’t pull himself up so he gets his foot on the bottom step of the ladder. His backpack with the computer is weighing him down too, and leaving it here is not an option he likes.
Evening comes and dusk falls
The darkness of the well becomes palpable. All he can see is that there are passages leading away from the well, but they are so dark that he dares not take any of them. Just then he hears a voice from above calling down into the well. – Are you okay, asks a woman looking down the well? – Well, yes, but I can’t get up. I can reach the ladder but can’t pull myself up, says the man. – Aha, says the voice, and he sees how she starts to climb down. – But what was the point of this, says the man, when he sees the woman jump down to the bottom of the well. – “Now we’re both stuck down here,” the man continues. – No, says the woman, I’ve been here before, follow me and I’ll lead you out. The man follows the woman through the dark passages leading away from the well and after a while out through a wall near the river, where they can get back up to street level.
The cost of being stuck is high
To translate the story above into what I see in activity after activity, is that you see something that you want to achieve, but put yourself in a situation that you can not get out of. This is because you don’t have the knowledge or method of how to move forward. It is easy to start work, but it is more difficult to move forward when you encounter resistance and difficulties, which means that you ultimately fail to achieve the improvement you really want to achieve. Getting stuck then has a big cost attached to it. Monetarily, you have costs for everything you have done so far in the work, while you will not reach the point where savings or revenue increases occur in the business. Emotionally, you have a lot invested in succeeding. People in the team are energized and willing to work forward, and they dream of how good it will be when they are done. It’s just that if you don’t really push and get past the obstacles that always crop up, the team gets bored too. If the working group is not given the right conditions in the form of training to learn HOW, or relief in the daily work, or perhaps the opportunity to reinforce with future skills and resources, well, then even the most charged working group will soon get bored. As a result, no progress is made. You are stuck. There is no profit. What you wanted to achieve, you do not achieve.
Don’t get stuck in this working year
Don’t get stuck during this working year. You recharge during the holidays, thinking that now you have the opportunity to make the improvements you have been thinking about for so long. It’s like that work starts in the fall and ends in the spring, for the next holiday season. So make sure you don’t get stuck in the well, as in the story above. Take the opportunity to educate yourself, create conditions, make a good improvement plan, get good tools and methods for your future work. We at Clean Stream can help you with all of the above. We can give you advice to get you started and we can also really make sure to support you long-term, throughout the coming year.
