Little investments, big wins

What if I told you that spending $25K today would give you $100K every week for the next ten years? Would you spend it?

This is not a hypothetical question.

The purchaser of a large manufacturing facility was touring the plant when he noticed a machine sitting idle.

"Why isn't that machine running?" he asked.

"Because a part is broken."

"How much does the replacement part cost?"

"Twenty five thousand dollars."

"How much revenue is lost by not running the machine?"

A little back of the envelope math ensued...

"About a hundred grand per week."

That's a true story. Here are a few others.

The fortune 500 company

A fortune 500 company had a large team dedicated to building installers for their products. The process involved manual work that could have been automated with a little effort. A small, skilled team of developers working for maybe six months could have eliminated the need for most of the staff on their installer team.

But they didn't think they had the time or resources to make the investment. They needed all hands on deck to get the current bach of installers out the door. And once the current batch was done, another crisis always seemed to arise. This short term thinking meant that the investment in proper tooling was perpetually delayed, and the cost to build and deliver installers never decreased.

The fortune 50 company

A fortune 50 company had a team of four software developers whose job was to build installers for their cloud platforms. The job mostly involved verifying builds, editing some XML files, and similarly tedious tasks.

One member of the team realized that he could automate the entire process. When he suggested this to management, he was told, "We don't have the budget or resources for that." He did it anyway. It took about a week of work. The team's job went from 120 tedious and error-prone man hours per week to around 3 man hours per week. It wasn't long before the entire team moved on to more productive work.

Long-term thinking

These are all true stories. How does this happen? How can intelligent people miss opportunities for such big wins?

There are two main reasons. First, it is difficult to identify these opportunities. And second, investment usually feels risky. People generally avoid that which is difficult and risky. Thus, people generally avoid capitalizing on these opportunities.

It is a rare person who can regularly identify and solve these systemic problems. They are people who move the bottom line.

To become such a person requires taking time to intentionally distance yourself from the immediate urgencies of the day-to-day. Try blocking out four hours on Friday afternoons to reflect on your career, your industry, and important problems. It takes commitment, but the payoff is worth it.