Entrepreneurship

The internet is littered with inspirational words about mistakes. I mean can you believe what this Google image search found? And that’s just page one of 300!

Crazy right?

It got me thinking about poka-yoke.

You’ve probably heard about the Japanese term translated as “mistake proofing” or the more business school-y, “inadvertent error prevention.” The concept was formalized, and the word adopted, by Shigeo Shingo as part of the Toyota Production System.

It’s any mechanism in a process that helps a person avoid mistakes. It serves to eliminate defects by preventing or correcting human error. For example, if a part requires three screws, package those screws in sets of three.

Here is where I come in.

Less Doing, the company I founded, is a Poka-yoke.

And not because I never make mistakes, because that would make me a robot, and I’m a long way from robotic. But because I mess up all the time.

Sometimes, I pivot like a maniac to find solutions to our big ideas at a pace that leaves some of our older team members, stunned and crabby. But that’s what makes us work.

We can identify not only where things ARE going awry, but where operations could go, for lack of a better phrase, “pear-shaped.” If you live, as we do, in the world of trial and error, you develop a pretty good arsenal of solutions.

My passion has become investigating the surest way to eliminate foreseeable errors, thereby redirecting my headspace toward forward motion. In other words, all I do is isolate areas where a solid dose of poka-yoke is required.

Sometimes my clients don’t know where those bottlenecks are, but I do. I’ve been the bottleneck, I’ve put in two screws when I should have put in three. I’ve fallen in love with a process that was repellent to others. I picked the wrong course of action. I didn’t listen.

It’s not hard to help another person when you’ve trudged that road before. In fact, it’s the only kind of advice that works, because it’s based on experience.

Poka-yoke, in theory, seems painfully obvious. But “obvious” is often an under appreciated asset. Because continually looking for creative ways to minimize mistakes pushes people to rethink the process; it invites innovation.

And I’d rather google images about innovation over mistakes any day.

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“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Those four simple words can absolutely devastate your ability to be productive.

The average person’s life is littered with projects that never get finished simply because they were never actually started.

Procrastination is to blame.

Maybe that’s an okay way to live for the average person, but I’m not average and neither are you.

Whether you’re an aggressively aspiring entrepreneur, seasoned CEO, or stay-at-home parent — procrastination is going to be your #1 hurdle to success.

In order to make the absolute MOST out of your day, you’re going to need to do one very important thing.

DELEGATE.

Delegate everything you don’t truly need to do yourself — trust me, more things fit under that umbrella than you realize…no less than 90% of your day can be delegated to someone else.

Is delegation without its flaws? Absolutely not. But those flaws are far and few between compared to the stress, disorganization, and overwhelm associated with procrastination.

Delegation can come in a variety of forms depending upon your situation. For me, delegation comes almost exclusively in the form of my team here at Less Doing.

They help me navigate around the common triggers of procrastination…

• Boredom
• Lack of motivation
• Distraction
• Overwhelm
• Uncertainty of success

…and help me get things done. Are those completed tasks always perfect? Not always, but at least they’re a step in the right direction, a building block to something better.

If you refer to the above graphic, you’ll get a good visual sense of the levels of delegation. There is not one optimal approach and the level at which you delegate will depend on the task.

A good way to begin using this strategy is by applying it to your inbox. Ask yourself,

“Do I need to do this now?

“Can it wait?

“Can someone else handle it?

Once you have determined those parameters, you can them figure out how involved you need to be in the process. If your work environment is built on mutual respect, and you’re willing to give your ego a rest, you’ll be amazed how little you actually have to oversee.

More importantly, when delegating all excess in my day, I’m creating the mental and physical space necessary to work on what I’m fantastic at — being a husband, father, and helping other people improve their lives.

As you start to get more comfortable with delegation, you’ll slowly notice your schedule freeing up as your day becomes less mired in the tasks other people can do. You’ll also notice that, as you prepare tasks for delegation, your focus will sharpen — you’ll start thinking and working ON your business, rather than IN it.

You’ll enjoy the headspace to honestly evaluate the state of your business (or your life) and where you want to go next. When you’re ready to make the leap from delegation amateur to delegation aficionado, be sure to employ tools that will increase your efficacy, including:

• Trello — the best workflow and project management tool out there
• Slack — a bastion of highly-effective asynchronous communication
• Evernote and Dropbox — cloud-based tools that allow you to store and share anything and everything surrounding your delegation

When you start investing in delegation you’ll start living a healthier, happier, and freer life.

I guarantee it.https://upscri.be/6892b4?as_embed=true

Whenever you are ready…here are 4 ways I can help you become more replaceable and grow your business:

1) Join our FREE Facebook Group — The Replaceable Founder

2) Get our FREE Replaceable Founder Mini-Course

3) Come to our next One-Day Intensive “Becoming Replaceable Workshop” in NYC

4) Want to work with us privately? Just answer a few questions and find out if you’re a good fit. Apply Now

I took a one-week Disney Cruise with my family from NYC to the Bahamas and it was the greatest vacation I’ve ever had. It was also an unparalleled experience in customer service, attention to detail, proactivity, and fun.

Before I talk about the cruise I want to give some context to why this was so fascinating to me. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach has what he calls the “Four Seasons Rule.” He and his wife, Babs, decided that when they are at home they never want to have to do anything that they wouldn’t have to do while staying at the Four Seasons.

No trash to take out, no beds to make, no shampoo or wine to keep stocked, no repairs, etc…now obviously to do that you need to hire a lot of different people and put a bunch of systems in place.

Essentially they’ve setup one of those yard sticks at carnival rides that tell you if you’re kid is tall enough to go on or not. If the task at hand is below a certain level, it’s not something Dan wants to have to deal with.

It’s a version of one of the fundamentals of the Less Doing system whereby I teach people to create artificially restrictive limits on themselves in order to force innovation and eventually, effectiveness.

Except in this case instead of saying you can only take an hour to do something, or you can only spend $100 dollars on a project, this version says that unless the task requires involvement above a certain level, then there is no involvement at all.

That’s how we felt the entire time we were on the Disney Cruise.

Some of my favorite highlights:

1. The boys all got bracelets that were locked to their wrists and essentially acted like LoJack.

They could use them to access the various kids clubs on the ships and once they were in they were “secured” and couldn’t leave until a parent picked them up.

Inside they were treated to events, activities, visits from Disney characters, meals, whatever they wanted. It was a really flexible and honestly spoiling (for us) solution.

If the kids were getting crazy and needed to let out some energy, kids club. If we were sitting at a meal and one of them wasn’t having it, kids club. If we just needed a little adult time, kids club. Totally amazing, and they loved it.

2. The level of personalization was beyond anything I’d ever seen.

Even though we ate at a different restaurant every night, we always had the same two waiters, Pedro and Franchescha. They referred to all of us by name, knew our preferences, and had our favorite drinks waiting on the table when we arrived.

3. Our room was cleaned or organized no less then three times each day.

Each day we had an itinerary of the next days events and the rooms were spotless. A unique feature of the Disney Cruise staterooms is a split bathroom. There are two small units, one has a sink and toilet, the other has a bath and sink. The idea being that you can still bathe a child so someone uses the toilet in private.

4. The unending access to food and drinks was not as dangerous as I thought.

The food was not astounding but it was really good, really available, and you never had to wait for anything. So of course the first day I totally gorged myself but for the rest of the trip I did a lot of grazing.

It was really nice because it meant that if one kid wanted to go on the water slide but another one wanted to sit and watch a Disney movie on the outdoor movie screen I could go back and forth between the two, stopping at the shawarma stand for 30 seconds to get a lite “snack” to keep me going.

Also the idea of having to sit down to a full on meal — with four children way more interested in the guy dressed like Captain America than eating — would normally be much more stressful.

5. The level of coordination is unlike any I had ever seen.

We were sitting in the grand theater about to watch a live show and one of my boys said he wasn’t feeling well. As I picked him up and rested him on my shoulder he quickly proceeded to throw up all the way down my back and pants and onto the woman in the row in front of us.

Mortified, I tried to apologize while expediently moving towards the exit. In the 9 seconds it took for me to get to the door of the theater, two people were already on their way in to clean up the “protein spill.” (Disney has their own language, for example there are no employees at Disney, only cast members).

We got to our room about two minutes later and my wife was feeling really bad for the woman we had pretty much drenched in our sons vomit and wanted to get her a gift card to the on-ship boat.

I called the front desk no more than 4 minutes after my 4 year old got sick on a boat with 3599 other people on it and asked the representative if they could try to find out who the person was.

I was told that she had just heard from one of her colleagues and that the guest was staying in room XXXX. I was shocked that they had that information, again making us feel like we were the only ones on that ship.

6. I figured out a couple minor but important hacks.

The showers on cruise ships are very very small. I realized the first day that I could go to the locker room of the very ample gym/spa and enjoy a sauna and shower that was nearly the size of our entire stateroom.

In addition, my youngest still has the occasional bottle and storing milk would have been a pain. The “beverage station” on the boat had unlimited soft drinks, tea, and coffee. Which meant there was a milk dispenser with unlimited access, problem solved.

One of the biggest things for me is that it was the first time in my memory that I was fully disconnected from the internet (by choice because you can pay for WiFi on the boat) for more than two days.

I had just relaunched my Less Doing brand and I only needed to implement one system in order to set my mind at ease. I setup Intercom with a company email and set an autoresponder on my personal email that any request should be sent to oao@lessdoing.com.

Then I had a couple of very trusted team members monitor activity on Intercom. Not only could they respond to inquiries but in my absence they were actually able to close business for us.

That week with my family was an experience I will cherish forever. I highly recommend anyone with the opportunity, take a Disney Cruise.https://upscri.be/6892b4?as_embed=true

Whenever you are ready…here are 4 ways I can help you become more replaceable and grow your business:

1) Join our FREE Facebook Group — The Replaceable Founder

2) Get our FREE Replaceable Founder Mini-Course

3) Come to our next One-Day Intensive “Becoming Replaceable Workshop” in NYC

4) Want to work with us privately? Just answer a few questions and find out if you’re a good fit. Apply Now

From the 298th episode of the weekly Less Doing Podcast.

When you reach a fork in the road where one founder wants to go one way and one wants to go the other, you can not take both forks.

Today, it’s just me. A letter of how and why I’ve changed my direction. Not going back to, but a revival of my brand and endeavors that allowed me to be closest to the work I crave the most: help someone reclaim their time. This is when I feel the most impactful.

In this episode is the I wrote this letter to my community detailing this transition. The why and the what’s next. Several of the core values from the company I co-founded such as “love what you do”, “learn from experience”, and “never settle” are being felt and honored in full force throughout these weeks following this transition.

I chose to take my fork in the road on my own, following my heart and focusing my attention on the thing I am most passionate about: people.

My future, is the reaffirmation, expansion, and evolution of Less Doing and the Optimize, Automate, Outsource framework through the Less Doing Labs, the Less Doing Coaching Certification, The Less Doing Mastermind, and my own speaking and consulting. I can’t wait to see what challenges I get to work on tomorrow.

Make it an effective day!

Naveen Jain (@naveen_jain_ceo) is a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges through innovation. He gives new meaning to the phrase “to the moon and back” and has changed the industry of monitoring inner health.

“Making money is like having an orgasm: you would never get it if you focus on it. It has to be a byproduct of the things you really enjoy doing.” — Naveen Jain

On this episode of The Less Doing Podcast, you’ll get to know Naveen’s two most recent ventures, Moon Express and Viome, alongside his brilliant advice for entrepreneurs in creating successful work endeavors.

Naveen’s Advice — How do you know if your dream is realistic?

1. Think ‘God forbid, if I succeed, is it going to change the lives of 1 billion people around the world?’ If the answer is no, then it’s not worth doing.
2. When you tell them your idea and they don’t think your crazy, you’re not thinking big enough.

“Always remember the life of an entrepreneur is like a heartbeat…

it’s always up and down. When it’s smooth, you’re already dead and you just don’t know it yet.”

Quickie Show Notes:

• Moon Express is the first company in the universe with authorization to leave Earth’s orbit and land on the moon #tothemoonandback
• Learn leveraging the mineral resources the moon has to offer {specifically Helium 3 aka the best fusion source we have} is beneficial for humanity.
• How do you know if your dream is realistic?
• When once you start to think something is impossible, it becomes impossible for you and not someone else. The more people who think it’s impossible, the more people have taken themselves out of of solving that problem. That means you have the field to yourself.
• Does being a non-expert help you or hurt you?
• Fundamentally challenge the foundation, you have to challenge the experts have taken for granted

• Viome is the company creating a world where illness is optional #listentoyourgut
• All chronic illness starts with your gut, using Viome, learn how to manage your inner health
• Dream so big people think you’re crazy…

To get the full low down on Naveen’s insights, listen to the complete episode below.