Fun fact, yesterday the “C” key on my keyboard stopped working. The keys on a keyboard are one of the things that I’m sure everyone takes for granted. I know I did.
The expectation is that when you stroke a key, the corresponding letter will be typed, or the action command will happen. I write a lot. And, I also design, so I’m hitting the “command-C” prompt to copy something to paste it in somewhere else. Which is what I was doing when the key failed.
Take a look at this photo of my old keyboard and compare it to yours. I wonder how many times I clicked those keys to actually wear off the letters on the keyboard for S, E, C, N & L. Interestingly, only the C key bit the dust. A quick Amazon order, and I had a new keyboard at my doorstep the first thing the next day.
What do you rely on that is unnoticed?
If we have any takeaways from this at all, it is that we are constantly surrounded by things that are important but go unnoticed until they break, go missing, or cause a problem.
In your business, what’s the equivalent of the “C Key?”
- Middle managers
- SOPs
- New employee onboarding
- Scheduling
- File naming
- Humidity levels in the shop
This could easily be a gigantic list. The C Key represents only about 3% of English writing, but when it didn’t work, it was a 100% failure because I couldn’t quickly use Control C to copy the prompt for the work I was doing at the time.
In your shop, what is something that you don’t really notice much, but when it breaks or fails, it is an immediate, gigantic problem?
Worse is when something breaks, and one of your staff members doesn’t say anything about it. They just make do.
Kicking a Computer
About ten years ago or so, I was walking the floor in the shop one afternoon, and one of the staff members slapped the side of the computer monitor. I said, “Hey Kevin, what’s going on?” He said, “This dang thing froze up on me again,” and then he reached down and restarted the computer. Then, he said something that caused quite the stir: “Yeah, I have to do this five or six times a day.”
Hold on. I watched him go through the motions of restarting the computer and relaunching everything so he could get back to work. It took about ten minutes. This meant he lost an hour of productivity a day.
“Why haven’t you said anything?” I asked. Kevin replied, “Well, I didn’t want to bother anyone about it.”
Here’s the Lesson
Your team could be working around “broken C Keys” every day. Maybe they are like Kevin and just don’t say anything, and they “deal with it.” Most operational disasters start with micro-friction points.
Sooner or later, these escalate into something bigger. Sure, I’ve seen the wear and tear on my keyboard, but I never thought it would one day simply stop working. Maybe Kevin saw the computer slowing down, taking longer to fire up in the morning, or other issues.