It can’t be so. Albert Einstein wrong!? Is nothing sacred anymore? Some of the most revolutionary discoveries in physics, leading to a number of the major technological inventions of our time are based upon Einstein’s premise that nothing in the Universe travels faster than light. If found to be untrue does that mean that everything I learned in my high school and college physic classes is wrong? Is it possible that technological innovation that is based upon the theory of light is faulty? At least that would explain why all of these fancy gadgets that I feel I must have never seem to work the way the manufactures claim they will work.
The news that Einstein’s theory might be wrong made me start to think about other things I’d learned growing up that may have been sound teaching in my youth but were unsound based upon what is known today. As a kid I was told if I studied hard and got a good education I’d get a good paying job. Unfortunately today that isn’t always true as many of the 14.0 million unemployed and 8.8 million underemployed can attest.
I was also told that if I worked hard, “keeping my nose to the grindstone” as they use to say back then, that I would advance in the workplace. It didn’t take being in the working world very long before I discovered that sage wisdom to be unsound advice. What I discovered was that people who worked hard were difficult to find so they stagnated in their career as upper management was reluctant to advance them fearing a lazy worker would be the replacement. However I saw that people who worked smart, making every job look effortless, were quickly moved up in the ranks.
The observation had me questioning how individuals were able to work so effortlessly and prompted me to go back to college and gain a Master Degree in Organization and Systems. Educated on the studies of such people as Peter Druker and Frederick Winslow I discovered that there was a right and wrong way to perform every function. Through the course of my studies I learned how to analyze any task, breaking it down into components that were more easily managed and placing those components into an order that would easily and quickly bring the task to completion. In essence, creating a system where people would complete the task by working smart rather than hard. This knowledge has served me and my company well over the years as I have studied every task within my organization and established a system as to how that task will be performed. New employees to my organization think I’m anal and try to impose their idea of how tasks should be performed but quickly discovered that the methods I’ve enacted do require less effort and reach completion quickly.
If your organization struggles with excessive payroll and it seems to be taking forever for tasks to be completed you might want to consider studying these tasks to come up with one best way. If you find that there is no time available or a staff person knowledgeable enough to perform this study it might be worth the money invested to hire a consultant to help your firm. Like my college education, it was a one-time investment that has given me a lifetime of residual returns.
Edward Boyle
CEO, Katchen Company
Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado. The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.
