When Overhead Saves Time

Avoiding process for too long can cost you

Our cat has diabetes. Before the vet’s diagnosis, we didn’t even know that feline diabetes was a thing. But we love that little fuzzball, so we elected to treat him.

Treating feline diabetes means giving him insulin shots twice a day: morning and evening. When my wife is out of town, it’s easy: I take the responsibility each morning and night. Once I’ve worked it into my routine, it’s easy to remember.

When we’re both around, it gets trickier. Missing the occasional dose is okay, but double-dosing could lead to a fatal blood-sugar crash. High stakes.

So some mornings we had to figure out who did what via text message.

While waiting for this exchange to play out, one of us was paralyzed. If we miss a dose, our cat’s blood sugar will be elevated for days. If we double-dose, he could die. So someone is stuck in the house, waiting for this communication in order to decide what to do.

We got pretty efficient at the communication, but it still took a great deal of time, most of it simply waiting. Although nobody had to report to a “boss”, neither of us was empowered to act alone.

Clearly some kind of system was needed. If we tracked each time that we gave him insulin shots, then either of us could, at a glance, know what needed to be done, and act on it. No communication or waiting required.

The 2 minutes we spend making this simple schedule every 2 months saves us hours of waiting and communication.

Why Does This System Work?

First, we start with organizational clarity: as a part-time feline health-care team, we have a clear goal of keeping our cat alive. On top of that foundation, we have operational clarity: at any moment in time, either of us can tell the state of our cat’s health care and take the correct action.

You can find the same behavioral patterns in a growing organization. As a solo operation, you don’t have much of a need for any kind of tracking. When you start to grow, you rely on direct communication to develop a shared situational awareness, while avoiding spending time on more sophisticated coordination systems.

But as the size of your team or the complexity of your task grows, this becomes untenable. You spend a great deal of time in ad hoc conversation, but even worse, members of the team may be unable to act without it.

It’s at this point that the development of a more sophisticated process becomes a good investment in your team’s productivity.