{"id":635,"date":"2020-06-10T20:20:35","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T20:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klasternit.com\/?p=553"},"modified":"2020-06-10T20:20:35","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T20:20:35","slug":"ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/","title":{"rendered":"If you see a snake, kill it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"b-qt qt_109431\">If you see a snake, just kill it \u2013 don\u2019t appoint a committee on snakes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bq_fq_a\">\u2013 Ross Perot<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Throughout my career I\u2019ve followed this simple rule<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you get an email, respond to it<\/li>\n<li>If you get a task, do it<\/li>\n<li>If you get a call, answer it<\/li>\n<li>If you see a social mention, respond to it<\/li>\n<li>etc<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To many times people sit there looking at something, or scheduling a meeting, when they can just simply, and quickly, complete the task. When you have 10\u2019s, 100\u2019s or more people doing this, your entire organization grinds to a halt, while more efficient and nimble competitors begin to run circles around you.<\/p>\n<p>We scaled an organization to 100 people with phenomenal productivity, all delivered cost effectively. We produced over 30 software products and fixed more bugs per month than the next 4 competitors combined. We did this by relentlessly eliminating waste, waiting, meetings and other forms of sand in our gears to allow us to work efficiently and productively, at scale. Part of what I did was evangelize some simple concepts of prioritization, personified by the quote above about killing a snake.<\/p>\n<h3>Shoot first, ask questions later<\/h3>\n<p>We were in a training exercise in the Army, some years back. I was the patrol leader and the mission was to move from Point A to Point B. We encountered an enemy patrol, and as I spotted them through the woods, I immediately raised my rifle and began shooting (blanks). The instructors whistled the excercise complete and gave me, as the exercise leader, the highest rating.<\/p>\n<p>They explained that what I did was exactly what they want infantry leaders to do. When you see the enemy, in such situations, don\u2019t think, wait, plan, analyze \u2013 just be aggressive and decisive \u2026 and attack. They said 9\/10 of new leaders stand there looking around, wondering what to do. In most cases, the enemy has time to spot them and seizes the initiative<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t stop, wait, set up a meeting on how to deal with the situation; I killed the snake. In life, it is often the same way, particularly for small tasks. When you encounter them, quickly and decisively deal with them so they don\u2019t pile up. It seems simple but most people don\u2019t do this and it drives me nuts<\/p>\n<h3>Lockwood rule<\/h3>\n<blockquote><p>It shouldn\u2019t take more time to discuss a task than to do it \u2013 Brian Lockwood<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If it takes more time to discuss something than do it, it may indicate that a task of such short-duration, should just be completed, not discussed<\/p>\n<h3>Empower people<\/h3>\n<p>The people closest to the problem are the best ones to solve it. So empower your people to make decisions (and mistakes) so they can take action to complete tasks without having to discuss them, get approval etc. If you need 3 levels of approval to sharpen a pencil, then your organization is going to calcify. Again, this seems intuitive but many organizations are simply too hierarchical to allow people to work at any level of independence and velocity.<\/p>\n<h3>5 minute rule<\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019ve never spend a lot of time detoxing my email inbox. It is amazing how clean you can keep it if you respond to many short and simple requests quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Respond to everything in 5 minutes. Not 15 minutes or 30, not in a couple of hours, but now. I used to get emails from customers and have a response out sometimes sub-minute. The responses were amazing<\/p>\n<p>Want to elicit a positive reaction from a potential customer? Respond to their email in less than a minute<\/p>\n<p>In addition to great customer satisfaction, the 5 minute rule is really efficient. By responding to, and closing out a lot of emails, you simply have less to manage.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest advantage is that when you respond to things immediately, you don\u2019t forget them. 99% of the time, when people drop an email, the excuse is \u201cI forgot to reply\u201d. Then they forgot to prioritize it, flag it etc. Why not just respond to the damn email so you don\u2019t have to worry about it?<\/p>\n<p>Most of our emails were customer facing. If you are using email for an internal communication system, I\u2019d encourage you to catch up with the times and implement an internal discussion forum like Slack that is more opt in and less intrusive. You can have email forwarding, but I strongly discouraged that<\/p>\n<h3>1 hour rule<\/h3>\n<p>Often you can\u2019t create a thorough answer in 5 minutes, so we had the 1 hour rule that stipulated all requests, internal and external, should be addressed fully in 1 hour. You should still respond in 5 minutes, but you can set expectations that a more detailed email will be forthcoming in an hour or less. If you couldn\u2019t resolve or respond in an hour, reply in 1 hour anyway to set expectations of when you would be able to.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine if you had a task that had to flow through 5 people, or 10. Now consider that each person was allowed to sit on that task for a few hours, up to a day or two before replying. Now compare that to a task that flows through 5 people with the 1 hour rule. In the former, even the simplest, multi-stakeholder task would take weeks to complete. In the latter, it could often get done in a single day<\/p>\n<h3>Email abuse<\/h3>\n<p>These rules can fail under the assault of too many emails. That is why I spent the last 5 years of my time in my company fighting back against email.<\/p>\n<p>First, I strongly discouraged anyone from sending me emails. If you sent me an email, you would be introduced to a level of pain that would discourage you from doing so again<\/p>\n<p>Was I unapproachable? No, I was on our discussion forums 16 hours a day engaging in a variety of conversations, but I did not like getting emails. I don\u2019t think emails are effective or helpful for internal communication<\/p>\n<p>We reserved emails for customer facing interactions and really important things like certain memos, communicating about big problems etc.<\/p>\n<h3>Enter bureaucracy<\/h3>\n<p>I think the definition of bureaucracy is when additional rules and regulations starts to make your organization less efficient instead of more. If there are 50 rules related to how you interact with a customer that elongates your response time or even results in some correspondence not being responded to at all, then that is a sign that you perhaps once agile and responsive organization has begun to calcify. Any rule that prevents me from doing any of the things I mentioned at the top e.g. responding to an email immediately, is counter-productive in the context of customer experience and general productivity and should be revised or removed. Otherwise, you will have more rules and fewer customers.<\/p>\n<h3>Use case<\/h3>\n<p>I once sat down with an employee who seemed to have a hard time completing tasks. I asked her to show me a a list of all the things she was working on.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Respond to this<\/li>\n<li>Forward this<\/li>\n<li>Delete that<\/li>\n<li>etc<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In 5 minutes, we had totally reduced her backlog simply by triaging some tasks \u2013 completing the important ones and deleting some others, responding to some emails and forwarding some tasks to others so they could work on them. This person had become a big backlog in our organization, but we were able to quickly break through it just by decisively dealing with her tasks, vs sitting there looking at them all day<\/p>\n<h3>Summary<\/h3>\n<p>Your inbox is filled with snakes. Don\u2019t sit there looking at them. Don\u2019t waste everyone\u2019s time setting up meetings to discuss them. Take the self-initiative to kill them and get on to your next tasks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; If you see a snake, just kill it \u2013 don\u2019t appoint a committee on snakes. \u2013 Ross Perot Throughout my career I\u2019ve followed this simple rule If you get an email, respond to it If you get a task, do it If you get a call, answer it If you see a social mention, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v15.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>If you see a snake, kill it - Centar NIT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If you see a snake, kill it - Centar NIT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&nbsp; If you see a snake, just kill it \u2013 don\u2019t appoint a committee on snakes. \u2013 Ross Perot Throughout my career I\u2019ve followed this simple rule If you get an email, respond to it If you get a task, do it If you get a call, answer it If you see a social mention, [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Centar NIT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-06-10T20:20:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Player\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/\",\"name\":\"Centar NIT\",\"description\":\"Biznis Inkubator\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je.jpg\",\"width\":800,\"height\":600},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/\",\"name\":\"If you see a snake, kill it - Centar NIT\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-06-10T20:20:35+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-06-10T20:20:35+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/f8e1a3a563da5ad8d1603b9411ddfe37\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/ako-vidis-zmiju-ubij-je\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/f8e1a3a563da5ad8d1603b9411ddfe37\",\"name\":\"Player\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2432a6e4f305129918b0415f9c74b39a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Player\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centarnit.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}