Do you Understand the Benefit of Setting the Path for Your Team?
Hint: It is not about you
Goal: Discuss why do I have more headlines than published stories
Currently I have published about 47 articles on Medium. If you look at my unpublished stories you will see 75+ headlines. Most of these unpublished articles have a title and often a few sentences.
Why?
I don’t believe in writer’s block. That is just an excuse to procrastinate.
By having a title and a few lines I am set up for success. Having these two things helps me jump over the hurdle of getting started. I read the title and the few sentences that I wrote when I create the document and then I am ready to write. No writer’s block.
Why does this work?
It works because you don’t have to generate the starting point. The starting point is already been created(and can be modified later) and those sentences should jar me into a thought process that originated the headline.
Hemingway used this technique in his writing. He would write and stop in a middle of a sentence or thought.
If you are not a writer, why should you care?
I am explaining my pipeline process to let you know the value of setting the path toward success. It has nothing to do with writing. It is the pipeline that is the secret. Actually it is the first steps in the process that are gold.
Imagine you are a leader of a team. You have an employee that you need to complete a task. The task requires 10 steps.
What is your strategy? Just tell the employee to do it? That might work but it is not guaranteed. It might work 20% of the time.
What if you actually did the first 2 steps and then handed over the rest to your employee? Your success rate will jump to 60%.
What!!!!
Yes, by helping the employee with the first couple of steps you are setting them up for success. They are more likely to finish the task.
Subway actually did an experiment that proved this. They used to give cards that every time you bought a footlong they would punch your card. After 8 punches you got a new footlong. Most people did not complete the cards. Only 20%.
By switching to 10 punch cards and pre-punching 2 for the customer, they were 60% more likely to finish the card and collect the footlong. Note that both cards only needed 8 punches to get a footlong.
Let’s do the math. Suppose we estimate a footlong to be $7 dollars. So a person finishing an 8 punch card will yield $56 dollars for Subway. Let’s say we just have 1 million customers in a year. That is $56 million dollars. But only 20% finished the cards so we only get 11.2 million dollars. And we pay out 200,000 * $7 or $1.4 million for the free footlongs. So our net profit is 9.8 million.
I know that they can go and buy a footlong without punching cards but let’s consider the worse case where they do not.
What about the 10 punch card? Well we gave them 2 so they still need 8. So our potential gain is $56 million dollars. But we collect only 60% of that so we have 33.6 million. We pay out 600,000 *$7 = 4.3million. So our profit is $29.3 million.
$9.8 million vs. $29.3 million!!!!
Now do you see the benefit of a pipeline? Now do you see the benefit of setting the path for your team members? Now you see the benefit of setting the path towards success for yourself?
Coach your team to success by pre-punching the first few items on their path to success.
My two cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com in October 2020)
I got to go…my future self alarm went off
Robert Trajkovski is professional with experience in leading people and projects in Steel/ Power, Refining, Chemicals, Industrial Gasses, Software, Consulting and Academia. He has worked for both owners and engineering companies. In addition, he has instructed 73+ courses at several institutions and often offers his courses for free on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttrajkovski/
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