My dog enjoys sitting outside on the deck. But there are times she opens the door to see what is going on inside. After a game of her opening the door and me closing it, she will finally decide where she wants to be. Her preference would be to leave the door open so she can go back and forth. She might miss something.

At work, there’s a lot that happens that people don’t want to miss. A meeting where something important is discussed. A project that will have a big impact on the company. Job openings. People want to know what is going on in places they can’t see. They don’t want to miss out. How are you creating the conditions so people don’t feel like they are missing out?

The local wooded park has standing water in places. And that means mosquitos. They love me, but I don’t care to be bitten. So, my ritual has been to hop out of my car and apply mosquito spray. Until one day, I realized the temperature had been well below the point where mosquitos are active for some time. I had been applying mosquito spray out of habit, not because it was necessary.

The same happens in business. We continue to do things out of habit that may no longer be necessary. It takes periodically, deliberately examining work being done to determine if it continues to be necessary. Are you still doing things that are no longer necessary?

Every day about noon, the wind picks up and blows pretty aggressively. On one particular street, the daily gusts have shaped the trees so they are permanently bent sideways from the wind. And in the morning, seeing the trees with their sideway lean causes one to wonder if a different landscape design would have been chosen if the designer knew this would be the outcome.

The same sorts of bending of organizations happens all the time to accommodate the daily flow of business. And eventually, the bending becomes permanent. The question is, do you leave something in place that is not designed to work that way, but has adapted as best it could? Or, do you remove it and put something more functional in its place?

Friday. For many people, it is the day to wrap up work and get ready for the weekend. Often times, brain power and focus start to drop off. Thoughts start drifting toward how time will be spent over the weekend. And that’s why I was so surprised to see a company scheduling important training on Fridays. Not only is attention waning, but people had no opportunity to implement what they learned before time off, leading to a high probability the learning will be lost.

Important stuff should be prioritized earlier in the week. Not first thing on Monday, because people won’t be able to focus if they have a pile of work that needs to be cleared. Tuesday or Wednesday is best because people are fresh, ideas can be implemented and people can clear their desk before leaving for the weekend.

How are you scheduling important things in your business?

For a lot of years, the annual ritual for planting my garden starts with using a hoe to turn up the dirt and amending the soil, mixing the nutrients and the turned up dirt with a shovel. The practice got the job done, but was not efficient. This year, my neighbor lent me her rototiller. What a difference the right tool makes! Not only was it faster, but it did a better job.  Not just a little better job, a significantly better job.

The same happens all the time in business. People use tools that work, but aren’t designed to do the job quickly or effectively. Having the right tools can make all the difference in how quickly work gets done. And how much the people doing the job enjoy it. Do you have the right tools in your business?