How to Manage Your Wood

Are you “focus on the task” person or do you think big-picture? I’m a task person, and only recently had an “ah ha” moment that made me realize I need to think before I act.

Here’s the simple story: Along with being the Director of Business Development for BKG, I am also a part owner of a now defunct nightclub and restaurant. At the beginning of the summer we decided to build a deck outside to attract an after-work crowd. So we built the deck, which I paid for ($2,000). The deck was built in two days and literally thirty days later we closed the bar. So I hired someone to take the deck apart so I could re-use the lumber for a deck at my house. Once the deck was disassembled, I loaded all the wood on a trailer and hauled it to my house where I unloaded it in a huge pile. The contractor who is going to build my deck came to my house to give me a bid and told me I needed to separate the wood by size so he can see what he has to work with. So I separated all the wood into separate piles by size.

Mistake 1) If I had been thinking big-picture instead of just being set on accomplishing a task I would have realized that a deck was not going to save the nightclub and restaurant. Mistake 2) When I hauled all the wood to my house I should have stacked it in piles as I unloaded it from the trailer; instead of trying to accomplish the task of just getting it off the trailer and putting it all in one big pile.

This is also, until recently, how I approached my position at BKG. I have the job of getting new business in the door. I would sit at my desk and call and e-mail as many potential clients as I could, trying to get them to pay attention to us. Really all I was doing was moving around that pile of wood. I decided to take a step back and rethink my sales process. I wrote down a lot of questions. Two that kept coming back to me are: When contacting these potential clients was I really providing value? Was I really giving them a reason to do business with us? The answer is “NO.” I need to provide value first which in turn will give them a reason to work with us. I need to be a thinker first (provide value) and a doer second (reason to do business with us) and stop playing with my wood so much!