Before you can add, you must subtract.
A senior executive with whom I once worked asked members of the organization to become more entrepreneurial. At the same time, he was fully cognizant of the workload his people had so he wanted to make certain they had the time, as well as the energy, to think and do differently. It was a practice that worked.
When you remove tasks from a job, it enables employees to have the time to think and do differently.
Albert Einstein once said, “Out of clutter, find simplicity.” Easy to add things, difficult to eliminate them.
Doing so, however, leads to simpler and better ways of doing things. It also enables employees to feel better about what they are doing because they have a say what they do and why they do it.
John Baldoni is chair of leadership development at N2Growth, is an internationally recognized leadership educator and executive coach. In 2014, Trust Across America named him to its list of top 100 most trustworthy business experts. Also in 2014, Inc.com named Baldoni to its list of top 100 leadership experts, and Global Gurus ranked him No. 11 on its list of global leadership experts. Baldoni is the author of more than a dozen books, including his newest, “MOXIE: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership.”
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