The greatest waste in any organization

The greatest waste in any organization is waste that no organization needs to pay but does regularly and the cost is high! What is it? It is wasted time, talent and energy of staff who are underutilized and whose time is wasted by supervisors. Let me explain!

I often do culture audits in organizations. One of my standard questions is this: Are you being used to your maximum potential, given your abilities and gifts? In almost every case, the answer is "No!" My follow up question is this: "Has your supervisor ever asked you that question?" Again, the answer is almost always no.

So here you have employees who want to use their gifts to the fullest and know they are not and employers who are choosing to leave that unused talent on the table. Who loses? The organization for sure which could see greater return on their investment along with staff who are unfulfilled. 

When I was in organizational leadership I would regularly ask my own assistant, "Is there anything I am doing that you could do for me?" And, "If you were running this office, what would you encourage me to do differently?" Those two simple questions allowed me to offload tremendous amounts of work over the years to competent and top flight administrators who could often accomplish tasks far faster than I could. This freed up precious time that I could use for other purposes. A win win for me and for the organization.

A second prodigious waste of time are ill prepared meetings where people come in late, where the facilitator is unprepared and as a result the staff are unengaged, paying more attention to their phones than to the object of the meeting. It is estimated that half of all meeting time in the United States is wasted. 

I once worked for an organizational leader who was habitually late to his meeting, came unprepared or simply did not show up. Repeatedly! I remember one time after my schedule was eradicated by his behavior, I left the building, went to the local Panera Bread and contemplated quitting right then. It was not too long after that I did resign. Aside from the total lack of respect shown, the wasted time and therefor opportunity was huge. And this was a large organization. 

No meeting should be held that does not start and end on time, has a clear agenda, agreements on how the meeting will be conducted and the attention of those present. If leaders give opportunity for the meeting to wander it will. If they model discipline and good planning they send a message to others about these values. We cannot ask of others what we ourselves do not model.

These examples show a lack of respect for staff, as well as the organization as a whole. But they also illustrate the waste that we can allow to rob our organizations of time, talent and job satisfaction. 

If you are a leader, regularly ask staff members if they are being utilized to the fullest and if you get a "no" work with them and their supervisor to change that equation. And on meetings, set a new standard if it needs to be set for disciplined and time effective meetings. These are important culture statements in any organization.