What The Heck Is "Delivery Sauce" And How Can It Change Lives In Under 2 Minutes?
"Hi! How are you? I'd love a small, black coffee, please.""Uh, yeah, I'll be with you in a second."
Has this ever happened to you?
You bring the courtesy and it's not returned?Your job, whether you're on the clock or off the clock is to treat people with respect.
If you're in the service industry, it's your job to go above and beyond that benchmark.
Let me explain how this is relevant to life and how it's not just me complaining.
Our job is to deliver value, not just create it.
If you make the coffee and deliver it with a smile, the coffee tastes better and people want to come back to your cafe.If you make the coffee, push it to the counter and yell "CHRIS!" you're not making customers for life.
Just creating the deliverable isn't enough.
You need to DELIVER it in a way that your customer, student, client, patient, or user can accept and enjoy.It's like adding bearnaise sauce to a steak, or Caesar dressing to a salad. It will work by itself, but the enhancement is a differentiator from the usual.You need to add your special delivery sauce!
2 Minute Action
How can you add more delivery sauce to your work?Is it reading an article on bedside manner?Is it sending a follow-up thank you email to customers after their first purchase?Is it getting a coffee with the teacher in the grade ahead of you to see how to you can better "on-ramp" students from your class to his?
Do you know what doesn't even take 2 minutes?
A smile. A fist-bump. A pat on the back. A "thank you." An anonymous post-it note on the monitor of your colleague.You have all the resources you need to improve the state of the world around you.And you can make a difference right now.
The Single Most Useful Productivity Hack You Can Use In Less Than 2 Minutes Everyday
Okay, I hate "hacks."I'll be honest.They're usually taken out of context, oversimplified to suit every scenario, and don't actually move the needle.This one feels different, to me.
It's a little weird, so stick with me for a sec.
Gerunds.So, gerunds are those verbs that end in "-ing."
- Working.
- Planning.
- Compiling.
- Visioning.
- Assessing.
Etc. etc.
I see people use these works in their task list all the time.
"I'm going to be working on the report for our Atlanta warehouse, today."This is no good!
What does "working on" mean?
It has no clear beginning or end.It doesn't explain how much work will get done or when the whole task will be done.It just says "I'm busy."
We want to avoid being busy. We want to be productive.
A better task description would be:"I'm going to input the McKinsey report into our database so I can decide if we need to close the warehouse in Atlanta this week."Focus on what you will actually achieve, today. This is a core principle of the Agile Framework and it will keep you focused on discrete deliverables.And that's what productivity is all about.Small, incremental deliverables.
2 Minute Action
Review your task list for today.Use these 3 Questions to avoid the gerund trap.
- What did you achieve/finish yesterday?
- What will you achieve/finish today?
- Do you have any impediments or dependencies that might stop you from finishing, today?