Get Ahead of the System

If you are building systems and habits in your life, you know the value of consistently taking action. One aspect that you will encounter is when the system that has a delay that seems harmless but is really destructive.

Delays in systems are normal. When you start exercising, you don’t see results related to your actions for a while. Instead, you have a pause. You keep working out and keep eating right but don’t see positive results.

If you keep up with the routines, you will see results in the future. But it takes time. There is a delay.

This delay causes most people to quit. They can’t sustain the efforts when the outcome doesn’t improve. But if they just kept going a little longer, they would have received the payoff.

These delays are problematic but even more problematic are the delays that seem innocent but are really loaded with negatives.

When my wife and I moved into our new house in 2017, we moved into a house with a dishwasher. We were living in an older home without one and were used to doing dishes right after dinner. So having the dishwasher was a great upgrade!

I would load the dishwasher after dinner and run it at night. But in the morning, I’d be rushed and would disregard offloading it. Then the day would get busy, and we would add our dirty dishes to the sink.

By the time evening arrived, we were busy making dinner, adding to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. After dinner, I would clean everything up. I started with offloading the dishwasher, then I would reload it and run it.

While this seemed to make life a little easier, it started to frustrate me because it seemed like we ALWAYS had dirty dishes sitting in the sink.

I hate clutter so this would drive me crazy. Finally, I realized that if I offloaded the dishwasher earlier, all those dirty dishes would accumulate inside the dishwasher and out of site.

I started to offload as soon as I was able instead of waiting until evening. The difference was great. Instead of dirty dishes cluttering everything up, the kitchen stayed cleaner.

But let’s break down the system to get more insight because this story is used to illustrate a systems principle, not highlight my dishwasher routine. All I did was change the TIME of a certain task. I didn’t run the dishwasher more often. I didn’t use more soap or run it an extra cycle. All I did was change when I offloaded.

That small change in timing was enough to create a drastic difference in outcome. Instead of having dirty dishes cluttering up the sink all day, the sink stayed clean and clear.

Stop for a minute and think about that from a business standpoint. There are plenty of businesses doing all the work, but the timing causes these backlogs. They still complete all the work, but they do it in a way that seems cluttered and disorganized. But it is a simple timing problem.

The best approach is to get ahead of it. Don’t wait to hire until customers start complaining of delays, see the increase in orders and be proactive. Even if you don’t hire, can you cut down the onboarding time? Can you use temps for these increases? There are myriad ways to get ahead of it instead of having the same amount of time and money in the rears, causing customer dissatisfaction.

For an even greater opportunity, let’s explore personal debt. If you want to buy something that you don’t have the money for, you can take a loan. The bank will give you a loan but then add interest payments.

So, you get the money and get the item now. But the sacrifice is that you pay more. Sometimes, if you used a high interest credit card, you pay a LOT more money for it. All because of timing.

Let’s look at the example of buying a car. If you buy a car with a loan and pay interest, you will pay more money for the same item. If you waiting to buy the car until the end of that period of time that you were paying the loan, you could save up the money to pay cash and keep all of that interest for yourself.

So, the timing of when you buy the car has a huge financial implication. We need the car now, so we need the loan now. Used sparingly this isn’t devastating.

We need a house and don’t want to wait 30 years of saving to buy it, so we get a mortgage. This makes much more sense when you see the alternative. You still need a place to live for those 30 years, so you rent. Your rent payments are likely as much as the mortgage payment so instead of saving the mortgage amount each month, you spend it on rent and never move closer to buying the house.

But some people use this approach to buy almost everything. They live paycheck to paycheck. They rely on high interest credit cards to buy things now.

If you are struggling to make ends meet because you have a low paying job and lots of responsibilities (kids, family, etc), it makes sense.

But only for those necessary items. Upgrading cable isn’t one of those items. Getting the fastest internet speed so you play video games is not a necessity. Getting the latte on the way to work isn’t required.

Learning about systems and this deceiving delay can help you design optimal systems. You can spot when you are doing the same amount of work and a slight change in timing will create a better outcome.

Use this knowledge to look at your current systems to identify areas where this delay is causing havoc. Then work to find new ways around it so you can reap the benefits without paying the extra costs.