FEMI TAIWO: Secrets of Winning at Work (IV) – Standardize

STRATEGY WITH FEMI TAIWO ON MONDAY

Oluwafemi Michael Taiwo, PhD

Michael is a first class chemical engineering graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, and a PhD holder in same discipline from the University of Arkansas, United States. He works in a multinational energy giant in the United States.

To be hyper-efficient at completing repetitive tedious work, it is important to first cut out non-value adding tasks and then simplify the rest. Previous articles dealt with these topics. Once work is simplified, it needs to be standardized.

We all ask the following questions: how can I do my work faster, easier and more accurately? How can I produce more without compromising safety? How can I achieve more without tipping the work-life scale to all work and no life? In short, how can I do more with less? There is no way to answer these questions without resorting to standardization. Standardization involves using standard processes to create standard products. A personal example should illustrate this.

My mum raised ten kids (five biological and five adopted), taught a high school Biology class of 300 students and ran a small business. Yet she managed to always fix dinner. “That’s what the food timetable is for” was her terse response when I asked how she managed the culinary aspect of her job. The “food timetable” is a schedule of what to eat when. On Sundays, for instance, we had bread and egg for breakfast, rice and chicken for lunch and garri and nuts for dinner. What’s more? The timetable was visibly posted on the refrigerator so we all knew what to expect when. No one was surprised with what appeared on their plate. Over time we knew the timetable by heart.

The timetable helped my mum know what to buy as she passed the farmer’s market and what to cook when she got home. It helped her not waste time thinking of what to prepare for her large family. Indecision is the thief of time. Having a food timetable killed indecision. What are we having for dinner became an irrelevant question. She knew. We knew. We could all move on to the next step of actually making dinner.

The food timetable not only saved time but also improved our health. By holistically looking at the week, she could see whether we were having enough vitamins and proteins in our diet. I didn’t care for fruits and veggies but I had no choice. I ate whatever was on the plate. My mum didn’t have to guess whether her kids were well nourished, she knew and could prove it. Our food timetable was a poster for balanced diet.

The food timetable led to the creation of recipes. She wrote down how to prepare each food: fill the big black pot to a third, bring to boil, pour six cups of flour and continuously stir till paste is uniform, simmer for five minutes, serve while hot. With the printed recipe, she could delegate cooking to any of my sisters and the food came out just as good. She could afford to get home late without us getting hungry. In fact, after she created the recipes, it was rare for her to prepare dinner. Everyone wanted to do it because making a nice dinner no longer became a mystery revealed only to wise mama. We all knew what we were having, how to create it and eventually, why we were having it (cost, ease of preparation and nutritional value). By creating a standard product – the food timetable – and a standard process – the recipes – my mum made us all enlightened and empowered while she had more time to focus on other matters of value. Everybody became a winner.

Civilization is impossible without standards. Standard products – USBs (flash drives), electric power outlets, to mention a few – enable us all to plug and play on a common platform. Standard processes – recipes, formulas, templates – help us do work faster, easier and accurately. E = mc² is a standard process. It tells you how to calculate the amount of energy a given mass will give off. Standards obviate the need to re-invent the wheel hence ensuring that effort is directed towards new creative endeavors.

Look at what you do and think of how you can create a food timetable and a recipe out of it. During standardization, you may discover that some of your job description requires further clarification; clarify and continue to standardize. In other words, there is feedback between each process from Eliminate to Simplify to Standardize. A pictorial representation is shown below:

Spreadsheets are ubiquitous in the business environment. They are a perfect example of standardization. Spreadsheets enable repetitive tasks to be done with considerable ease. Consider creating a spreadsheet or template for every aspect of your job whenever possible. It will make life a whole lot easier. Standardization also has one more advantage. It leads to automation, the subject of the next article.

***

Subscribe free to JarusHub for more career and workplace tips

[subscribe2]