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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I think of the movie Office Space every time I’m stuck in traffic, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
I love pranks. I don’t get to pull them off much anymore especially since I work from home, but when I was early in my career at the bookstore, I built up a bit of a reputation for being a prankster. One of my favorite pranks ended up teaching me a valuable lesson I carry with me to this day.
I’ve mentioned in previous episodes that the hierarchy at the bookstore was store manager, assistant manager, and key carrier. Sadly, we did not have an assistant to the store manager role. Typically one of us would work the opening shift, another would world the mid shift, and the other would work the closing shift.
On one particular day I had the closing shift, Brian the assistant manager had the mid shift, and Gerald, the store manager had the opening shift. At some point during my shift I got called up to the front of the store to help with something that required one of my keys and it was at that point that I realized I’d left my keys at home. This meant that not only would I be unable to assist with key-related duties at the front that day, but I was missing the keys I would need to close the store.
Rather than send me home to get my keys, Gerald suggested that when Brian went home for the day, he could leave his store keys with me. I had the opening shift the next day and Brian had a later shift, so he could get his keys back from me then. We all agreed it was a good plan and went on with our day.
When 5 o’clock came, Gerald went home. Then when 6 o’clock came, Brian went home. It wasn’t until it came time to begin the closing routine that I realized both of them had left without leaving me any keys. Brian lived about 15 minutes away and Gerald lived around 30 minutes away. I could have called either of them to bring me keys, but I wanted to see if I could find another solution first.
After giving it some thought, I came up with a solution. Earlier that day we’d received our weekly shipment from the central warehouse. When we received that shipment, the truck driver would need to be let into the stockroom via an emergency exit. After the driver left, that emergency door was almost always left unlocked until we performed the nightly closing routine. The door was still locked from the outside, it just meant that the alarm for that door was disarmed from the inside. That meant the store was still secure from the outside even when the door alarm was disengaged.
I checked the door to see if it had been rearmed, and sure enough, it had not! Since all of the front doors had locks which could be locked from the inside without a key, this meant I could secure the store by locking all of the front doors from the inside and then leaving through the back door which would automatically lock behind me.
I also found an extra set of register keys in the office, so everything was covered and the store could be closed as normal. Once all the closing routine was done, I let everyone out through the front doors, locked them from the inside, and then exited through the emergency door in the stockroom. I verified that the door was locked, walked around the building to the front and double checked the front doors, and drove home.
By that time Gerald would have been home for nearly 3 or 4 hours. He’d had dinner, got into comfy clothes, and settled into a newspaper or TV show with his wife. Once I got home I called Gerald. I told him that neither he nor Brian had left me their keys. He was quite surprised! He thought Brian had given me his keys.
His voice got excited and intent. “I’m on my way,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can!” I told him not to worry about it. I told him that I did all I could to close the store and that I was already at home. “You’re already home?” “How did you lock the store?!” I told him that the store was in a good neighborhood and most would assume it was locked so I’m sure it would be fine until morning. “WHAT?!,” he exclaimed! “You get back up to the store immediately! I’ll meet you there as soon as I can!”
At that point I couldn’t hold it any longer! I began laughing and told him exactly what I’d done to secure the store.
“Oh! That’s really smart. You did a great job! Nice work!” I think he may have said something about nearly giving him a heart attack and he wished me a good night and told me he’d see me tomorrow.
I have to admit, my motivation for closing the store the way I did was so I wouldn’t bother the guys. I wanted to prove I was responsible and could handle the job. I wasn’t motivated by wanting to pull a prank. But in pulling the prank and receiving Gerald’s response, I was taught something valuable.
There was something euphoric about being put into a challenging situation, coming up with a solution on my own, and then being praised for my solution. It gave me confidence, experience with troubleshooting, and impressed upon me something I wouldn’t realize until I was in Gerald’s position a few years later. That impression was the value of allowing other people to do their jobs and giving them some amount of freedom and creativity to do the job in their own way.
When I was running my own store, one of the more challenging areas to keep merchandised was our pen aisle. We had 16-20 feet of various pens and pencils. They had to be displayed in a way that made sense for the shopper and also made it easy for us to do inventory and reorder each week. It’s hard to describe just how challenging this was unless you’d been asked to lay out the dreaded pen aisle.
The corporate office would give us instructions on how to lay it out, but our aisle was different. I don’t remember what was different, only that out of all the options they sent us, none of them worked. I tried figuring out how to make it work, the department head tried to figure it out, and my assistant, Rhonda, tried to figure it out. None of us could figure out a way to do it in a way that didn’t compromise either the customer experience or the reordering experience.
We had a guy named Ed who was still in high school that came in and worked evenings in the department. I knew Ed was a very intelligent guy, so I decided I’d give him a shot at it when he came in the next day. Now, when I say Ed was smart, I mean that dude was a genius. In fact, after college, Ed got a job at Microsoft working on their surface team. I don’t mean their Surface tablets, I mean their Surface TABLE. If you don’t know about that revolutionary product, go check it out on YouTube.
I remember giving him the project, showing him the challenges we’d been unable to overcome, asking him if he understood the point, felt like he could handle it, if he had any questions, and then walking away to let him work on the problem. As I recall, I came back about an hour later to check on him. Ed had already used his excellent creativity and problem solving skills to figure out a solution! He showed me what he thought would work, I let him try it out, and he was right! By the end of the night he had it all complete. Ed and I were both really proud of his accomplishment. I think the standard way to solve that issue would have been to call the buyer at the corporate office, but I was proud that our team, specifically Ed, had been able to figure out a solution on our own.
I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it because I believe it with all my heart. Most people show up to work wanting to do a great job and do their best. For sure that’s the way people start out. Too often they are beaten down by stifling systems, insecure supervisors, red tape, egos, micromanagers, or bloated policies and procedures. Over time these things chisel away at energy, creativity, confidence, and enthusiasm. Or, as Geoff mentioned in a previous Monday Mailbag episode, they aren’t heard by their higher ups, so they become defeated and disconnected. People are systematized and sterilized to conform to the “way we’ve always done it” culture. That culture robs people of their desire to bring their best, and the company of the ability to adopt improvements.
But before I get too carried away pointing my finger at the corporate way of life that I left a decade ago, let me be honest with you about my own failures.
In 2013 I left the corporate world and started my own company offering podcast production services. In early 2014 my largest client, representing 75% of my revenue, closed their operations. Throughout the rest of 2014 I struggled to make ends meet. However, near the very end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, I began to see steady growth. The growth continued through the early part of 2015. That summer, I put up a booth at a podcast conference and business boomed!
At the time, I was the only member of my team. I took care of the editing, billing, project management, client communication, launching new podcasts for clients, and publishing of new episodes. I even took care of web development, which was a service we offered at that time. When we only had a handful of clients, these were all tasks that I could handle.
However, as the business grew, I found it more difficult to manage everything and problems began to develop. I was working crazy hours to get things done and it was very stressful. Before I ever even launched the business I knew that I wanted to hire a team along the way. But now I was at the point of being overwhelmed and faced with the reality that it was time to hire someone to help.
Over my years at the bookstore, I’d hired dozens and dozens of people. But this was different. This was my company, my brand, my baby. The idea of entrusting someone else to handle my baby with the same care and detail as I do was paralyzing. For a couple of months I did nothing. I continued to be crushed by the weight of all I was doing. I remember posting on social media that I needed an assistant to help me find an assistant! I was too busy to take the time to find someone!
By the time 2016 rolled around, I couldn’t take it any more. I had to hire someone right away and I had to take the time to do it regardless of how busy I was. The first step was to figure out which tasks I wanted to hand off to the new person and which ones I wanted to keep handling myself. Once I had that figured out, I could begin the search for someone who had the skills needed to perform the job. I didn’t have to look far. A woman named Karen was a host on my podcast network, and she had the exact skills I needed. After interviewing her for the position, it was clear that she would be a good fit. I offered her the job!
Hiring Karen was the best thing I could have done! She made an immediate positive change in our company. I deeply regretted not hiring her sooner. All the strain and stress I’d been struggling with for months could have been alleviated sooner if I’d just been willing to take the time to make the hire, and equally as importantly, willing to train someone and trust them with my baby. By the end of 2016, my team had grown to 10 people. Business had grown far beyond what it ever could have if I’d insisted on doing things myself and refused to train and trust other people to do the job they were hired to do.
Over 8 years later, Karen is still with my company, and she’s been great. Not perfect, but none of us are. She exemplifies someone who comes with a heart to do their best, learn from mistakes, and takes pride in her work.
Trusting those you work with and those who work under you is incredibly important. But when they are entrusted to do their job with freedom and exercise their natural gifts, clients benefit, work culture benefits, you benefit, the company benefits, and your industry benefits. Remember, there’s no “I” in team, and even The Lone Ranger wasn’t alone.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag on July 29th! Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.