Easy is not always quick: leave time for watering the goats

A lot of bosses assume that if something is easy, it will be quick. That’s not always true. Watering the goats, for example, is easy, but it takes a lot longer than you’d expect.

If you’re the boss, never assume that just because something is easy (requiring no specialized skill or innovation) that it will be quick. Even something as simple and routine as finding a time for everyone to meet can be the thing that derails an otherwise solid schedule.

Too often a boss eager for results will insist that anything easy will also be quick. Then when the schedule fails, the boss blames the employees’ effort instead of their own magical thinking.

Wait, what about the goats? Do you mean, like, literal goats?

When I worked at Cancer Support Community, a donor gave us a gorgeous, undeveloped, six-acre parcel of land where we could build a new support center.

The downside of receiving donated land is that you become responsible for maintaining it. In this case, that meant taming the overgrown brush, poison oak, and tall grass that had been allowed to take over.

After some investigation, we found we could rent a couple hundred goats for several days.  All we had to do was bring water to the site to fill the troughs. The goatherd would do the rest. The boss bought a container and rented a truck. The staff would fill the tank at our current building and drive it across town to the new site.

Super simple! Right?

Yes. It was simple. There was nothing complicated at all about filling the tank, driving it across town, filling the troughs, and driving back. It required no new knowledge or specialized skill. Even I could do it. (And I did.)

The problem was that the whole effort took over two hours. And, since the weather had spiked to over 100 degrees that week, we had to do it twice daily.

That meant four hours every day stolen from a staff member’s ability to do their actual job. Also, the goats needed water seven days a week, so add eight hours of staff time to the weekend.

Fortunately, our boss was wise enough to account for this extra time during goat-watering weeks.

What I learned from watering the goats

Whenever you’re creating a project timeline or action plan, don’t let the easy tasks kill your schedule by pretending they’re also quick.

“We can bang out a press release in an hour,” said the boss who always requires four rounds of micromanaged wordsmithing.

“That minor change can be done in a day,” said the boss who did not understand the need for regression testing.

“We’ll just get everyone on the phone,” said the boss whose own schedule was full for the next two weeks.

“We can bring water to the goats, no problem,” said the boss who knew it would take several hours a day. Then he added, “We’ll have to push back a few other deliverables to get this done, though.”

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