Learn The Art Of Giving Bad Work A Rest.

Separate Your Quality Of Work Away From The Rest Of The Crowd

I used to install floor coverings during a couple of decades in the past.  My father had learned the floor covering trade.  I used to help him do some of that work here and there.  I learned how to do what he was doing.  When I took over the family business of operating the furniture store, I inherited the floor covering retail model as well.  Nobody wanted to run the floor covering store.  I took it on at the same time I took over the furniture store operations.  Both retail operations, the furniture store and the carpet store, had separate locations with stand alone facilities.  My father quit the labor-intense floor covering stuff.  As a result, I hired the labor to be serviced by other employees.  That was a whole new experience for me.  I discovered how different the people who possess skilled trades can become.  Wow, that was a brand new set of interesting experiences.  Quality control became a constant issue of high governing maintenance.  The tail always seemed to wag the dog in that model.  The skilled laborers tried hard to control the dog.

It took me a couple of years to get that kind of leadership fully understood.  The best way I could see how to lead those skilled tradesmen was to become one of them.  I learned how to install flooring better than all of them.  I made sure I got properly trained, licensed and skilled.  No longer could any one of those skilled labored employees pull the wool over my eyes about performing quality work they were expected to do.  I was clearly operating inside the fort they used to protect.  I was complete buried inside their loop.  No lame excuses could survive my view.  I was practicing good leadership by example.  It is a very nice place to lead.  It has its shortcomings, however, but it will help to control those who are required to carry a licensed skill.  When you, the leader, can do very well what the skilled laborers do, it will go a long ways in helping your leadership demands protect better quality of work.  It will consume your precious other time demands but it will greatly add power to your leadership ways with those skilled trades.  In the end, I recommend it.

I was able to pull it off because I could do my other managerial tasks after hours.  I could catch up on my managerial functions of the two retail stores once the employees went home for the day.  I would also be able to properly schedule my flooring work in spaces of time that did not allow the tail to wag the dog.  I would only perform the crucial flooring work that required my licensed skills.  The rest of the menial tasks were performed by helpers learning the trade.  For example, I would send a helper up to a house to move out the furniture, tear out the old flooring and to prepare the new installation work.  Once the helpers completed that prep work they would call me to come and perform the actual installations.  When the installation was done the helpers cleaned up the site and put the tools away.  They took care of the wrap up duties on the site.  I left to go back to my office to manage my two business models.  I performed this kind of work pattern for almost two decades.  The flooring work became one of my "side" specialties.  By its nature, floor covering work could be easily scheduled properly.  My employees eventually nicknamed me, "The Doctor."  I still am referred to as 'Dr. Turner' from many of them from my past.  I hear it from some of them when I bump into them in the general public here and there.  I will hear them in public say, "Hey, Dr. Turner...how are you?"  I usually do not notice it much.  It became such a coined phrase back then that it no longer sounded strange.

I tell this story for one reason.  I learned something very valuable about those years of specialty trades.  I learned that some days do not exactly turn out as you had wanted them to become.  Sometimes the skilled work you performed did not turn out as well as it should.  Once in awhile, a carpet seam just would not cooperate well.  You would cut and burn it one more time because the first time looked terrible.  For some strange reason, your skill levels were not "on" that day.  For some aggravating reasons, your skilled performance was not going to cooperate on this particular day.  You could re-do your weaker efforts over and over and the results would continue to fall short of where your allowance was geared.  Sometimes it would just not come together well.  The craft of excellence got tripped up today.  Stuff happened.  The artful skills seemed destined to disappear.  Those days came around once in awhile, for one reason or another.  When those bad days of performance arrived wrong, I learned how to recognize their presence.  I could recognize that for some strange reasons, my best skills were not hitting the top of my performance levels.  I also learned how to recognize that even though I tried to correct where they were not performing well that some times the corrections did not turn out better.  In fact, many of them seemingly got worse.  I learned how to recognize this 'once-in-awhile' challenge.  It was something I learned how to identify early on within the skilled work I was performing.

I did not usually discover this kind of challenge very often, but when it arrived it seemed impossible to correct.  It seemed the harder I tried to improve the craft, the worse the results kept turning out.  I learned one of the most valuable lessons I could ever perform.  I stopped doing what I was doing.  I learned how to stop.  I learned how to pull up and stop.  For some strange reason, I was done doing good work for that day, and I knew it.  It was a great piece of quality discovery.  I was able to admit that it was not my day to paint great pictures.  For some strange reasons, my artful skills were absent from my ability to insert.  They were gone for the moment.  Nothing I could do would return them to play.  I learned the art of stopping what I was doing, professionally.  I learned how to drop that effort for the time being and go do something else.  In many cases, I folded up shop for the day and rescheduled to return the next day under a new and fresh approach.  I learned how to respect and make that kind of professional move.  It was amazing how much difference a day makes.  Almost always I would return the next day to easily perform excellent work that was such a huge challenge the day before.  Walking away was the best thing to do.  It was a tremendous lesson for my mind to learn to accept.  When it ain't happening, stop it.  I learned to stop what I was not doing well.  Come back another day and as if by magic, all would usually turn out smoothly.  It was a wonderful lesson for me to learn how to perform this new "delay technique" to my approach for overcoming those challenging days.  I learned the art of giving bad work a rest.

Do Your Job, But Do It Better Than Everyone Else

I came from a stubborn breed of family skills.  We were taught how to try, try again.  Guess what?  Sometimes that technique is over-rated.  Sometimes it is best served that you drop what is not going well and come back to it at a later time.  For some strange reasons, it ain't happening correctly today.  Learn how to properly turn it off and put it aside.  Forget about it.  Come back to it on another day.  Learn how to manage this stop work action in a professional fashion and improve the outcomes that were not going well.  It is an amazing thing to manage.  I learned how to recognize when the art was not there.  I learned how to quit forcing it to arrive.  Sometimes the right splashes of quality work skills are hidden from your current view.  Sometimes it does not seem to matter how hard you try to dig those splashes out that they refuse to arrive.  Learn the art of professionally placing a stop action method on those failing ways.  Learn how to properly manage positive procrastination.  Re-schedule that work for another day.  It will amaze you how easy it was to perform it well.

I can think of many times when I would return to do what I stopped doing.  I can remember how much I would discover how easy it was to do it well on the second day.  I often would think, what was so hard about this duty, yesterday?  What a difference a day makes.  Sometimes we get so wrapped up with being so efficient that we compromise the work we try to get done.  We actually believe that doing work that is greatly compromised will still turn out well because we are getting more done.  This notion is not a true one to trust.  In the end, your customers want the work to turn out right...not fast.  I discovered this great lesson from the stop work actions I performed once in awhile.  Although the lack of timely completion was somewhat irritating to many of those customers, the quality of work delivered always erased the rough notions they originally felt.  Always.  In the end, the customers recognized how much your quality of work meant to the job you did for them.  They become some of the best promoters of your trade that cannot be purchased in any other way.  I never advertised my flooring business.  Never.  I was always turning work away because I could not comfortably meet the required completion time demands.  I always had more work than my schedule could absorb.  Always.  Customers prefer quality work.  Most of them will wait in line.

I have not performed flooring work for almost 16 years and I still receive requests for doing someones work.  Sixteen years!  Good quality work is always desired.  Raise your standards.  Manage what it takes to meet those raised standards.  Recognize how important this kind of work becomes to the ones who pay the bills.  I used to carry quality furniture lines as well.  I made sure I designed my stores to get out of the funky, high-volume patterns that many try to define.  I worked harder on buying well in quality goods.  I wanted my customers to be able to appreciate the stuff we delivered.  It was not easy work.  It was hard to manage this kind of quality approach.  We did it profitably.  It was a great marketing pattern to protect.  I have been actively missing from that kind of management in those business models for over sixteen years.  I still own half of them, I just do not manage them anymore.  My point is, just yesterday a young lady was introduced to me.  She discovered through the conversation we all were having that I was the previous owner of the furniture store her aunt used to frequent.  This young lady was so proud of her hand-me-down sofa in her new condo that her mother gave to her.  Her mother got that sofa handed to their family from her aunt several years ago.  She was so excited to tell me that her aunt bought that sofa from me.  She also told me that her mother went to my current store to buy her new sofa just last year.  She was so excited to describe the stories about how they have all enjoyed that quality sofa they have passed around.  We had some good laughs about some of those stories.  Quality counts!

Learn how to eliminate the urge to compromise your quality work.  The world is so fast paced that we often times eliminate the quality of work we need to perform.  Slow down.  Learn the art of quality care.  Learn the art of quality management.  Learn the art of quality efforts, quality product buying, quality presentations and quality customer treatments.  They count more than you will ever know.

I learned early on that I could not be all things to all people.  However, I could be the best thing to those people who wanted it most.  I learned how to operate profitably in that kind of business arena.  It has been good to me and I truly recommend it to anyone else.  If at any time someone ever said, we need to find a good tile setter for our new family room.  All I would ever need to say is 'I will do it' and the work would be hired.  The quality of that reputation is forever placed in the minds of mental cement.  That is the one great distinction quality work brings to the table of security.  When you protect the quality of your work, the customers will always be waiting for you to do the job.  You cannot violate this rule, only to confirm it.

Learn the art of giving bad work a rest.

Until next time...