Sloppy

The Background Story

My wife was working late this past Wednesday night. Her shift that day/night required her to be the last anesthesiologist to leave (big hospital with over 20 operating rooms). So she is working this almost-last-case, and it is well past 7 pm. There is a surgeon (let’s call him Bob) waiting to perform his case next. My wife says to the charge nurse (let’s call him Frank), “Hey, let’s get this other room going so Bob can get this short, 20-minute case done.”

Frank the nurse mutters something like ‘ok’, and my wife gets going to make that happen. However, they can’t get the patient down from an upper floor in the hospital, and they have no idea why.

They finally track it down: Frank entered the patient’s name wrong in the system, and changing it is now almost impossible. It’s 9:30 pm, and Bob the surgeon has been sitting there doing nothing for 2.5 hours. He has been on-call all week and could have been home resting had he completed the procedure. Instead, he's still there, accomplishing neither.

My wife is not a big fan of Frank because things often seem a little off when he is on duty. Bob, the surgeon, listens to my wife’s explanation. He pauses for a moment and replies, “He’s sloppy.”

My wife exclaims, “Yes, that’s exactly it!”

Sloppiness Is Costly

Sloppiness is costly. 

After listening to this story, it dawned on me that many of us operate sloppily, and worse, we are not aware that we are operating that way. Sloppiness costs money, time, and our overall ability to be effective in life.

A Different View

Let me give you another example.

I mentioned that last week I was speaking at a big realtor event. At the end I said to everyone, “If you want me to call and help you with what you wrote down on your feedback card, put a big ‘C’ on your card and circle it.”

Thirty-four people wrote C on their card and circled it. To make things simpler and more efficient, I sent two emails and one text to all 34 people saying, “You wrote C, but in terms of efficiency, would you mind scheduling a 15-minute call?”

No one responded to the emails.

Two people responded to the texts by scheduling calls.

Two more people responded to the texts with “Stop bothering me.”

Thursday I sat down for two hours and made calls to the other 31 people (I only got through about half the list).

I had two great conversations. I left some messages. However, the big aha I had was when three more people answered and said, “Oh, I had no idea I wrote the C on my card!”

At this point I have spent 3 to 4 hours following up with people, most of whom didn’t even remember asking for the follow up. I thought...sloppy! It wastes my time... and theirs. But mostly mine!

What is the number one challenge I hear from agents? Consistency, usually regarding following a schedule and doing the thing(s) that are most important. 

What specifically is causing consistency to be a challenge? Sloppiness! I mean, that’s not the only thing, but it dawned on me that it is one of the main reasons. 

People are sloppy with what they say yes to. People are sloppy with what they put on the schedule. People are sloppy about what they say they will do and what they will actually do.

Maybe I am talking about you, maybe I am not. Could it be worth looking?

 

Impeccability

What’s the opposite of sloppy? Methodical, meticulous, shipshape. I like ‘impeccable’. What would it look like if you were being impeccable?

In Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, “The Four Agreements,” the first agreement is “Be impeccable with your word.” He says, “When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself.”

I suspect at least half of the people who wrote C on their card would have done otherwise if they had simply taken one extra moment to consider what they were doing. Further, the bulk of those people wrote that the thing they need to do is some version of “talk to more people per week” and “operate from a schedule.”

If they were being impeccable with their word, they probably would not have written the C on their card. They would have begun to look at where they say they are going to do something and not doing it. My assertion is that simply starting with “honoring their word” would make a profound difference in their action, results, and experience of being in their business.

What about you?

p.s. I am not judging or making any of those people wrong who wrote ‘C’ on their card - we all have blindly done things without thinking. This is merely an example that I felt we all could learn from.