Be warned this is a radical approach to a complex problem as such it would require a certain degree of intestinal fortitude to pull off; I came to it on the fly in a moment of guerilla inspired creativity during the Next Generation of Government Summit last week:
- Put a mason jar in your office for every person who asks you for tech support.
- Label each jar with the name of one of your colleagues who asks you for help
- Place a marble in person x’s jar every time they ask you
- Photograph your jars at the end of everyday
- After 30 days make a 15 second video that shows the evolution of the filling jars
- Gather the people in the boardroom
- Show them the video
- Explain to them that each marble represents a a time when one of them asked you to do something that took time away from your substantive duties
- Hand each person the jar with their name on it
- Tell them that it represents the karma you’ve built up over the past month and to kindly remember that when you come asking them to do something for you
Too funny! Intestinal fortitude, indeed!
Agree with Andy – this is pretty awesome, but not sure I’d be able to pull this off. I love the creative approach though and feel like this would be a good way to build a “show don’t tell” (advocated by the Heaths in “Switch”) business case for eliminating other types of inefficiencies. “Don’t believe me when I describe the inefficiency? How about this dramatic visual…” Could help inspire some action to change things.
@Steve – I drew the inspiration directly from Switch 🙂