General

Fundamentals

Talk to a youth sports coach for longer than five minutes, and more likely than not you’ll hear about “the fundamentals.” It’s cliché, but they’re a key part of any sport. You can’t be a good basketball player without a decent shooting form and the ability to dribble.

Transition to other, more traditional, work and you’ll see a different mindset around the fundamentals. We might tolerate our snail-like 30 words per minute typing or the time we waste every day trying to navigate through file directories without giving it a second thought.

But when we take the time to reflect, it becomes apparent just how important the fundamentals are.

For example, I know there are plenty of areas in which I’m lacking, but I happen to be particularly quick when putting together professional documents. Realistically, I can probably do it in half the time of an average person.

Assuming that I spend an hour per day writing these types of documents, that means that I’m saving an hour that others need to spend. That’s an extra hour every day that I have to prospect, network, study, or do whatever else is needed to advance the business.

Over any extended period, that time adds up quickly. And it makes me wonder what other skills there are that could have a similar, or even greater, impact.

What if deeper knowledge of my company’s offering, or a better understanding of buyer psychology, could allow me to close a sale in two engagements instead of three? How much time could I save if there was a more effective way to handle the internal administrative work that’s required?

-Brandon

2 Comments

  1. Love it Brandon. At work we call this lean. We try to lean everything. From how many clicks it takes to get to files on a server. From labeling the kitchen where items go so it can be intuitively cleaned by anyone. Moving machinery around for higher yielded per project. It’s more or less a foundation than fundamentals. Similar principals though. If rooted properly you should prosper.

    1. That’s an interesting point. I regularly work with Toyota and am amazed at the benefits of the lean systems they have developed, but I hadn’t made the connection between lean methodology and the importance of mastering the fundamentals. I guess it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think of the lean mindset as a way of assuring that the fundamentals are taken care of.

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