A Factory of One

115

Chapter 5

From Bad to Good, and 

From Good to Great

It is not the strongest of the species that survives,

nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive

to change.

—Charles Darwin

Like an Air Traffic Controller

Think about the way you started your morning today. If you’re

like most people, the first thing you probably did was check

e-mail. And if you are like most people, what started out as a

well-intentioned—and brief—triage of your mail turned into

a giant time suck in which 90 minutes disappeared with your

head up your, um … , inbox before you realized it.

Or perhaps you came to work and hammered through

the budget revisions the chief financial officer (CFO) had

requested. You were on a tight deadline, and you knew you

didn’t have time to waste.

116  ◾  A Factory of One

Or maybe you had an early meeting with a colleague who

was having difficulties with a project that you’re leading.

Or maybe you returned a call from the nurse supervi-

sor who needed information about a new procedure you are

doing in the hospital.

Or … , well, the list of things that demand your atten-

tion is pretty much infinite. When you walk into your office,

you’re like an air traffic controller, with multiple demands on

your attention at any given moment. That means that there are

many different ways you can structure your daily work; what,

when, and how you work can—and usually will—vary from

day to day.

But why is there so much variability in how you start your

day? For that matter, why is there so much variability in how

you manage the whole of your day? Is that the best way to

work? When you arrive at your desk in the morning, or when

you return to it after a meeting, you have a load of new infor-

mation that you have to receive, store, process, and distrib-

ute—but do you have a well-defined method? Or do you just

hack away at it, reading a few e-mails, checking a couple of

voice mails, and thumbing through some of the papers litter-

ing your desk until your next meeting? Do you have a standard

way of dealing with incoming work and customer requests?

Or do you just take care of your boss first or the person who

is screaming the loudest? Is this haphazard way of processing

information and work the best way to handle your job?

Is it possible that there’s a right way—or at least a bet-

ter way—to do your job? Yes, yes, I know: Because you’re a

software engineer, a surgeon, or the executive director of a

nonprofit, your job is inherently more variable than that of

someone doing the same repetitive task every day, like the

guy who receives parts at the loading dock of a factory. And

it’s true: Your work is more unpredictable and the types of

“goods” that arrive in your inbox or are dropped on your desk