Bus Orientation

Our oldest daughter, Emma, will be entering Kindergarten this year. This past Friday, I took her over to school for bus orientation. This is the time when all the new Kindergartners have an opportunity to practice getting on and off the bus, how to sit on the bus, learn about bus safety, etc. The parents even had the opportunity to take a short bus ride with the new students. In all, it's a very nice program a few weeks before school starts.

Couple this with Kindergarten registration last month and a couple of other events and it makes the transition to school much smoother for the children so that by the time school is in full swing, they already have some level of comfort.

I tell you this because how often do we throw our coworkers, employees, our customers and clients, or even ourselves right into the mix of what's going on. You wouldn't go out for a 10 mile run without warming up would you? You wouldn't just drop your children off at school the first day without even knowing their teacher's name would you? Yet how often do we skip the "warm up" for work? Maybe it's a project or something for a client. If we don't provide some kind of guidance for the people who will do the work, why should we expect that person to do what we want perfectly? Guidance doesn't mean micromanagement, it could be as simple as taking 5 minutes to show someone what you are really looking for, or assisting them for a few minutes until they get the hang of it, or even taking the time to lay out a standard operating procedure that someone can follow.

Take a moment and think about some of the recent projects in your business. Did you do any "warm-ups" with the people who were doing the work? What could you have done? What would have made the project gone better? How about for yourself - what warm-ups are you doing? Are you planning out what exactly you will be doing, or are you flying by the seat of your pants? Which way do you think you'll get better results with?

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