My fourth grader’s science teacher taught her class about work. But not the kind of work that us non-engineers think of……she was talking about the unit of measure: “Work = Force X Distance“
She didn’t teach them the equation above; she had them do an experiment. One student pushed against the wall with all his might for 5 minutes and another student moved paper clips (one at a time) from one pile on the left side of her desk to a pile on the right side of her desk.
She then asked the students who did more work. They were all surprised to learn that the girl moving paper clips did more “work” than the boy pushing against the wall.
The boy pushing against the wall had plenty of force, but no distance. The girl had both force and distance in her movement of the paper clips, however negligible it may have been.
In our businesses, how often do we use plenty of force without getting anything to move? How many lunches and one-to-one meeting do have with other professionals that don’t actually move the business any distance to our goals? How many times have we filled two hours with a series of 5-minute tasks that don’t move a project to completion?
And how many times do we ignore the “paper clips” because they are just too small to worry about? Like accounting, cold calls, paperwork, paying bills, returning phone calls, keeping track of mileage, identifying key sales ratios, maintaining and tracking a business plan, etc…
Maybe Gustave Coriolis was the first business coach.
