Quote:
Originally Posted by kccrow
Averaging 72 hours a week? Perhaps. You look at TPS and Muda, Muri, and Mura. It's obvious there's Muri here. Are there others to distribute that workload to? Are there activities that aren't fruitful and largely a waste (muda)?
I say that because I watch an owner of the company I work for do a lot of the same. He complains more than I do about burnout and how much he works.
The problem for him is likely different from you, but he feels this urge to micromanage and have his fingertips on everything that goes on. He has a great staff that can run the company without him, seriously. He's a smart guy and hires the right people. The problem is he just can't let those people do their jobs.
My advice to him has been to work smarter, not harder. It seems simplistic, but its truly the issue at hand for him. He needs, and maybe you too, to define the things that he should focus on and be responsible for and schedule them throughout his week. If its a non-value add process, should you be focusing on it? If its of no real or immediate benefit to you or the customer, dump it or at least put it on the back burner until its reasonable to work on. If its necessary for the customer, can you delegate it?
There was a company I worked for a decade+ ago where we did a specific TPS study and looked at the time we were spending on tasks. What we were surprised to find is that many of us were picking up the slack for others and working on tasks outside of our job description and what should have been our priorities. If I'm in accounting and doing 50% of an HR coordinators job, then I should probably replace the coordinator. Of course, I'm in a smaller company now and wear both hats, but my accounting workload has went down and I can absorb that adminstration segment. That is probably the case for many in a similar role. In any event, be careful the number of hats you try to wear. You find yourself becoming wildly inefficient at everything rather than efficient at a few tasks.
If I were in your shoes and I'm putting in 72 hours a week, I definitely would consider adding at least a part-time employee to delegate some workload to. Re-prioritize your workload and figure out what are the most important tasks for you to handle. Its not especially sustainable to continue on the path you're on.
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2019 was a confluence of ****. I'm headed for a lot of hours in 2020, but hopefully fewer. Some of it is on me, sure. But logistically it's going better.
I'm pretty efficient. I've removed virtually all the non-value added activities from my workload.
As far as the structure, there is my farm, dad's farm and a couple other ancillary entities that don't matter. I have some operations and dad has some operations that we pay each other for. In 2019 he had a full time and a part time dude working for him and I had none. I reimbursed him for the little bit of labor they did on me.
2019 had a bunch of weird shit. First and foremost Dad's fulltime and partime guys were shit they barely did anything, meanwhile dad and I were killing ourselves.
Second, I crammed a fairly big system change in our operation in the winter, which typically I work fewer hours. So that added a lot of hours to a normally slow time.
Third, the spring was goddamned wet. That did 2 things, 1, allowed us to move a lot of acres to fall crops that we hadn't planned on, which really stacked up a bunch more work in an already busy timeframe. So much so that I hired out some acres to go under one of my machines. Great way to NOT make money, but it is what needed to happen. Then when it came time to roll, it stayed wet, further compressing the busy timeframe. So I worked my ever loving ass off.
Fourth, I made some agronomic changes that needed some additional management to incorporate properly, because we hadn't done them before.
As far as moving forward, That shitheel guy isn't around anymore. The part time guy is now full time, and his work is better, but he wants a lot of time off. So the answer is obviously to hire more employees. But that's a tough ask in my part of the world. Everybody has labor problems it seems like and objectively, a lot of places can pay more than I can. Labor management will be pretty big moving forward as dad slows down.
Also, margins are ass. So it's difficult to make structural decisions which will further erode my already shit margins, which in 2020 are certainly going to be negative.
And I'm pretty efficient. I already eliminated most every non-value added activity from my life. Dad and his guy do some piddly shit, but I don't. I GTFO if I'm caught up.
There are also some functions that lend itself to screwing up my life, most importantly is irrigation, but I push the structure pretty hard, which puts me out there at 3 AM or whenever it needs swapping. But I'm doing it because it pays compared to the alternatives. So I do it. I run the numbers pretty studiously, so I continually evaluate operations and am not afraid to make systemic changes.
All that being said, I'm not burned out. I make time for my kids, and my wife does a good job of bringing them out when they can. Overall, I'm pretty happy. I'm also pretty self-aware and can objectively analyze my mental state.
It's not what I should be doing almost certainly, and definitely wouldn't be if I could secure higher level labor, but it's not in the cards and it's what I'm doing.
Well shit, I just looked at my payroll and I've already worked 2100 hours. I'll for sure be over 3000, but hopefully I can keep it around 3200 and under the 3700 I did last year.