One Simple Phrase to Run and Grow Your Business
“You can’t expect unless you inspect.”
This simple phrase carries a lot of weight. Understanding it, and implementing it, can be a key to growth and management success.
This means that when you assign work to somebody, you cannot assume that it’s going to be done exactly as you intend. We all know what assumptions turn people into.
Checks and Balances Are Key
All work, at any level in the organization, should be in some way double-checked, either by a person or an automated system. That does not mean that the owner of the business should be looking over the collective shoulders of every employee in every department. That’s neither desirable nor feasible.
The exact solution that works for your business will be for you to find, but you have to find a way to make sure that work is being double checked. Implement checks and balances in what you’re doing. If you don’t inspect or have some system of inspecting completed work, then you can expect that it’s not going to be done to your expectations.
You have to inspect before you expect.
Checklists and Balances
One final tip for this involves working to ensure the clarity of your intent as you pass work down for your employees. What I do, personally, is I write everything up as well as possible and create a checklist for the person I’m passing work to.
This gives them more information and some structure, which allows them to do the work according to my guidelines, which makes things easier on everybody in the long run. I also ask for them to provide benchmarks, which allow me to confirm that they understand the assignment.
