Are You A Bulldozer?

Do you remember the “work smarter, not harder” school of improvement? How did you feel when told you need to “work smarter”—inspired to go forth to do great things? Probably not. Most people don’t believe the dumb things they may be doing are their fault. “It’s management’s fault. They make me do it this way.” Now, whether that is true or not is not the issue. Employees will seldom accept that they are the problem. It is much easier for them to blame “the company” or “the pastor” or “the government” or….

A typical employee’s view of workflow is there are a lot of obstacles (policies, slow decisions, out-of-date equipment, etc.) that keep things from flowing smoothly. Again, it doesn’t matter whether it is true or not; it is how they view things.

EMPLOYEES’ VIEW OF WORK

So what, as the leader, can you do? BE A BULLDOZER! Proactively remove things that employees view as obstacles to productive work. If they are viewed as obstacles, don’t ignore them even if they aren’t.

REMOVE AS MANY AS POSSIBLE

Here is the key to this: remove as many real or imagined obstacles as you can, and people will work harder and smarter without even realizing it. They’ll be better off and the organization will be better off.

By the way, do you have someone who will tell you if you are the obstacle?

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The Leadership Credibility series:
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