Eat the Elephant!

 

Eat the Elephant!

Robert S. Michaud, P.E.

9/30/20

You have probably heard the old saying: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” Maybe you have heard it a bunch of times but haven’t really thought about what it means or how it might apply to you. It is one of those clichés that kind of gets lost in the language, but like most clichés, they originated from an abundance of truth.

Take your backlog of work, for example. Odds are there are some items on that list that are there simply because they are “elephants” – tasks that are either so big, complicated, ill defined or just plain difficult that they never get the attention needed to complete them. Perhaps the problem is a lack of time, or a lack of the right skill set on your team, or insufficient resources to get the job done. Any one of these challenges can put the brakes on a project.

There are a number of ways to deal with this problem, and it is very likely that you will need to employ more than one or maybe even several strategies to get it done. The first strategy, however, should be to break the project up into small, manageable tasks – and then start attacking the tasks that CAN be done. That does a couple of things: it moves you forward towards overall completion of the project, and it begins to build momentum for yourself and your team to not only demonstrate that it can be done, but that it is, in fact, getting done. Success, even in small portions, is a powerful motivator.

Then you get stuck again. You have grabbed all of the low hanging fruit, so to speak, and the tasks that remain are outside you or your team’s capacity. Don’t stall out here, you have already made good progress. Take some time and identify the remaining tasks and the resource shortfalls that prevent you from completing them. Consider even breaking the tasks into smaller sizes to again make them more manageable. Then, seek outside help. If you and your team find yourself stuck without the right tools for the job, find someone that has them. This might be others within your own company, but more often it means hiring a contractor or consultant with expertise in a specific field. Since you have broken the tasks into bite sized chunks, you won’t be paying for a lot of services you don’t need. Instead, you can be laser focused and contract out just those tasks that you can’t self perform. Companies such as ours have make it our mission to fill in those needed resources to accomplish tasks that often are somewhat unique.

Don’t let those elephants continue to grow and stomp out your profits. Get someone to help you eat it – one bite at a time!

© Michaud Engineering Inc. 2020