Why I’m Becoming More Productive At Work
Believe it or not, it’s because of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
It all started at this year’s State of the State when Governor Mark Sanford once again continuously quoted Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat.” After years of hearing Governor Sanford recite Friedman during speech after speech I finally decided to read the book. After all, how can I as a political operative understand South Carolina politics if I have no clue what our Governor is talking about?
It turns out that the book is more about outsourcing than anything else and much of the book concentrates on the use of Virtual Assistants and both the professional and personal outsourcing of our lives. Friedman tells the stories of multibillion-dollar companies outsourcing everything from software development to everyone’s personal favorite – customer service calls. Most intriguing is that Friedman explains that outsourcing isn’t just for the rich. Many small business people are outsourcing parts of their business. For example, a chain of McDonalds is outsourcing their drive through order taking. No, seriously. The customer orders through the normal speaker that we are all used to, but instead of talking to a person at the McDonald’s, they talk to a call center operator on the other side of the country. The operator plugs their order into a computer which is read directly by the McDonald’s cooks. According to Friedman’s research, McDonald’s is saving seconds per customer and although that may not seem like a lot, those seconds are adding up. They are servicing more customers each day and paying the call center operators far less than they would have to pay an employee at the McDonald’s location.
I became fascinated with Friedman’s outsourcing research and decided to try it on my own. When we opened our Internet company Under The Power Lines, I really wanted to hire a full time web coder, but because we were just starting out, we could not afford it. I decided to save money by outsourcing my web coding to a WordPress coder in Chicago. When my business started to grow I hired two more web coders. I am now able to build websites cheaper and offer faster customer service, but most importantly, I don’t have to manage full time employees. That frees up a great deal of my time to spend serving clients and being creative.
That led me to the idea of productivity. One of my best friends is my former college roommate Clark Covington. Clark is one of the most innovative and driven men I have ever met. He is the owner of several Internet based companies, makes good money, but unlike many successful Entrepreneurs, Clark always seems happy. He’s always been a very jolly fella, but now Clark has the money to do what he wants to do when he wants to do.
Completely hooked on how Clark got this way, I just started asking questions one day over a couple beers. Clark explained that through outsourcing, he is able to concentrate on the functions of his company that makes customers happy and brings in more business. He outsources the functions that are most time consuming giving him the ability to concentrate on what’s most important.
WOW! I just couldn’t believe what Clark was telling me, so I started digging deeper. That’s when I stumbled across a book that has completely changed the way I operate – Timothy Ferris’ “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.”
The title of the book is a little misleading. It’s not about how everyone can make millions by working just four hours a week. The book is a blueprint on how you can make work more productive, giving you more free time to enjoy life. It’s all based on Vilfredo Pareto’s 80-20 Rule.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Pareto observed that 80% of Italy’s income went to 20% of its population. That has been adapted as a business principle stating that 80% of a companies income comes from 20% of it’s customers. In the concept of productivity, we can mold this principle into a lifestyle design rule – 80% of your productivity comes form 20% of what you actually do.
Over the last month I have used that rule for my daily operations and although I am not where I want to be, I have steadily increased my productivity and my free time. In my next post I will tell you how I have used Ferris’ ideas in my political career, what’s worked and what hasn’t. Over the next few weeks I’ll keep you updated on new methods I’m trying. Hopefully you can use some of these ideas to increase your productivity too.
Popularity: 1% [?]
- Livin’ Venti – Episode 6: Welcome to the Jungle
- Is McDonald’s Attacking Christians?
- What’s Up With PNN?
- Campaign Group Therapy
- We Want To Bring Your Ideas To Life
Comments
About Author
Dan Waldron August 19th
You know, I have to tell you, I really enjoy this blog and the insight from everyone who participates. I find it to be refreshing and very informative. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted, I?ve spent most of my time here just lurking and reading, but today for some reason I just felt compelled to say this.
Clark August 19th
For more on Clark Covington visit:
Http://www.ClarkCovington.com
Thanks for the shout out Wes.
-Clark
Michael August 20th
Shameless self-promotion Clark! I love it…you’re my boy blue!
concerned citizen August 28th
It has been my opinion too, that Friedman’s book is mostly about technology and internet connectivity, whihc brought about changes in how the world businesses are carried out. In order to gain a perspective on globalization, it is good to hear what Joseph Stiglitz has to say and also I would recommend two books, which offer an alternative view point regarding globalization.
Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel winner for economics and was Chief Economist at World Bank) said while on a trip to India, that 600 million people from India (out of the one billion!) have been left out of the “development” fold of globalization. So, obviously, all India is not going to migrate into middle class, if anything the inequality is far, far worse now, after the advent of globalization.
Similarly newspaper reports have pointed out how Chinese workers are working in apalling conditions, to chhurn out the low cost products, with poor pay, cramped rooms, no accident or health insurance benefits, no job security, no overtime, long working hours – so who is actually benefiting from this sort of globalization? Corporates ofcourse, and the few privileged people of India and China who have been able to get educated in engineering and technology! Not the vast majority of population.
The two books are:
The Harvard Professor, Pankaj Ghemawat’s latest book, “Redefining Global Strategy,” is more academically inclined. I read an article of his published in the journal, “Foreign Policy”, where he argues that the world is, at best, only semi-globalized. His argument being that Cultural, Administrative, Geographic and Economic aspects of a nation come in the way of total globalization from taking place and cites examples of the same.
The other small, but interesting book, is by Aronica and Ramdoo, “The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller.” It is a small book compared to the 600 page tome by Friedman, and aimed at the common man and students alike. As popular as the book may be, some reviewers assert that by what it leaves out, Friedman’s book is dangerous. The authors point to the fact that there isn’t a single table or data footnote in Friedman’s entire book.
“Globalization is the greatest reorganization of the world since the Industrial Revolution,” says Aronica. Aronica and Ramdoo conclude by listing over twenty action items that point the way forward, and they provide a comprehensive, yet concise, framework for understanding the critical issues of globalization.
You may want to see http://www.mkpress.com/flat
and watch http://www.mkpress.com/flatoverview.html
for an interesting counterperspective on Friedman’s
“The World is Flat”.
Also a really interesting 6 min wake-up call: Shift Happens! http://www.mkpress.com/ShiftExtreme.html
There is also a companion book listed: Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
http://www.mkpress.com/extreme
http://www.mkpress.com/Extreme11minWMV.html
Add Yours
YOU