Making Sure Things Are Done Right vs. Doing the Right Things

I was recently working with a client and went to visit to a competitor’s store to see about recruiting some potential employees.

When I got some great customer service from the person behind the counter and asked if she might be interested in working elsewhere, she got mad at me because, as it turns out, she was the manager and she did not appreciate my attempt to recruit their employees.

While I can certainly appreciate her feelings, I realized that here we had a $50,000 a year manager doing a $10.00 an hour job. Yes, you may need to help out from time to time, but how can you believe you’re saving either time or money by doing a job that someone else could and should be doing?

Whenever you find yourself doing frontline work, it’s time to ask yourself:

Does this job really need to be done by me right now?
Should it be done the way it is now being done or is there a better way?
Am I the best person to do this job right now?
If I am doing the job, what is it costing me?
Am I doing this job to avoid doing something I don’t like to do?

This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.