Over the years I’ve yielded to
temptations to stick my nose into places that interest me. On one hand, these
snooping exercises are the product of curiosity, but I’ve found the technique
useful in a variety of circumstances throughout my life, such as when my wife
and I, moving to a new town, were looking at schools for the kids. It dawned on
us at some point that what we were looking for was not to be had by reading
anybody’s literature or being regaled by the wonders of this curriculum versus
others. The issue came down to a matter of the product—what were the kids at a
particular school like—and the only way to assess this was to look and listen to
the kids themselves, not the teachers or administrators.
Similarly, in my military career, I
found it valuable to visit other outfits to see what they were up to. Partly I
would be looking for new ideas, but more importantly I was gathering impressions
as a basis for developing a report card on my own unit. Even where I came away
from one of these visits confident that “we” were in better shape than “they”
were, inevitably I returned home with a clearer vision of our own strengths and
weaknesses and with ideas for improvement.
Take the Nickel
Tour
This leads me to recommend that you
consider the practice of nonspecific snooping for inclusion in your bag of
tricks, and if you are receptive to the notion, allow me to make a couple more
suggestions for carrying it out.
First of all, review your own
practices and procedures and then snoop your own operation. Ask yourself, “Do I
like what I see?” and then, “How close do we come to doing what our procedures
call for?”
Then go on a snooping expedition to
other job sites, cautioning yourself not to be judgmental or too bound up in
details but, rather, to take in the big picture. What is your overall impression
of the site itself? Is it well laid out and organized? Is there adequate
signage? Would you be able to make your way confidently and safely through
it?
What about the workers? Are they
busy? Are they properly attired? Do they seem to know what they’re doing? Are
they following standard safety procedures? Do they exhibit the characteristics
of a team? Are supervisors present and doing their jobs?
How about equipment? Are the bulk of
the machines operating or are they idle? Do they appear to be in good repair and
well maintained? Do their operators use them effectively and
efficiently?
There are tens, or hundreds, or even
thousands more indicators you can find on any work site, all of which would add
to your overall impression. My guess is that you could catalog them all and
study them for a week and still not know much more than you would from what your
first impression told you. What is important is that you take your impressions
back to your own operation and see not only how you stack up, but also what
improvements you can make based on the experience. What’s interesting is that
every time you do one of these snooping expeditions, you find yourself viewing
your own operation with new eyes—the key to continual improvement.