Escaping the “work of work”

Learning to swim changed my life. I loved the pool. I loved jumping into the water.?

I still remember the smell of the public pool my mother took us to as kids for swimming lessons. Those swimming lessons helped shape so much of my childhood.?

When my mother went to the Jefferson County rec center to ask for swimming lessons in the 1980s, she walked into the pool and asked the front desk.?

The front desk person showed her the options and we joined the swim lesson program that day.?

Not much has changed for our local swim clubs. And in fact, most of them have offered swim lessons the same way since they opened.?

So when I started working with an aquatics team on the issue of swim lesson enrollment, imagine my surprise to hear that it was the same as when my mom signed me up for those classes.?

The biggest difference now is that they call Danny Weinstock, the Director of Aquatics, he puts them on a list, and then they get into the class.?

Well, that’s what's supposed to happen.?

It really just turns into a long game of phone tag.?

We call the family, and the family calls back…we leave a message; they leave a message...sound familiar??

This can go on for days, or even weeks.?

Then it came to them.?

They asked themselves, “What if we stopped answering the phone and created a new way for us to enroll them in swimming classes? What if we let them enroll the same way they enroll for our other classes at the rec center - through the online dashboard?”?

Could you imagine removing more than 190 calls a year? That’s 190 messages to listen to. That’s more than 2 weeks of work, just in calls.?

Well, that is exactly what happened. This small, simple, and practical change dramatically changed the life of Danny Weinstock, the Director of Aquatics for the City of Louisville, Colorado..??

“The moment I realized that answering the phone isn’t customer service (it is the problem) I couldn’t allow the calls to continue.”?

What he means by this is that the customer cannot get swim lessons without calling. So the call is part of the problem.?

By creating a new standard, his calls drop and his swim lessons can happen faster. He can actually help more people by changing the way he performs this service.?

You can only make so many calls…you can only listen to so many messages in one day.?

You immediately limit your service capacity based on how many calls you can handle.?

But what about the rest of his job??

Keeping the lifeguards coming in, making sure the pool is safe, getting team members to welcome the kids who are getting lessons—all of these tasks become secondary when all you can do is answer the phone.?

That’s getting lost in the “work of work.” People both in and out of public service are caught in the “work of work.” People who are constantly struggling to get the work done because of how we perform the act of working.?????

But when you reduce the number of phone calls by letting people sign up online, suddenly those other tasks aren’t secondary anymore.?

When you look at the big picture, you can identify the useless steps in the process. You no longer have to get lost in the “work of work.”

We can do better.?

Interested in improving your workplace? Drop me a line here for a free consultation.