Imagine there are two workers, Jack and Tony, that have been asked to complete a task.  They sit next to each other and on their desks are 200 folders that need to be processed in one weeks time.  The exact task or what is in the folders is not important. 

Jack gets right to work.  He shows up on time, works late hours, follows the instruction manual to a tee, and completes the task right on time.  He stands before his accomplishment like Sir Edmund Hillary planting his flag atop Mount Everest, conquering a once thought to be impossible feat.  The boss is impressed.  Jack is already planning his acceptance speech for employee of the year.

Tony, on the other hand, has been showing up late, surfing the web, cutting out early, has been talking walks, and has been talking to other employees.   He is known as a 'slacker.'  At the end of the week he has processed only two files.  The boss is confused.  "Tony, you have done nothing," he says.

"Actually," Tony replies, "I processed one file and thought to myself, 'this seems like a waste of time.'  I did some thinking, spoke to some folks, and put together a plan that everyone agrees makes sense that enables us to reduce a week's worth of work to 1 hour.  I tested my approach with another file and it works.  By my calculation I think I saved us about 4,000 hours a year in productivity.  Here you go."  Tony hands his boss a piece of paper with the plan.

If your first response to this scenario is "yeah but" or "the problem with this example is" you may want to see if the name plate on your office or cube has been replaced with the name Jack.  Get the point?

 

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