31. Be Obsessive About Organization.

Quality work flows from a clean and organized work place. Make sure your work area, and our facility are safe, clean, and orderly. For every minute you spend organizing and planning, an hour is earned.

Marc's Message:

Would you like to work in a disorganized environment and live your life in chaos, clutter, and confusion?  Or on the other side of the coin, would you rather work and live in an organized, simple and more orderly way?  I would assume most of us would choose the latter.  So how do we improve our work environment and focus on organizational obsessiveness?  I truly believe it starts in each and every one of us.  It’s a personal commitment to becoming more organized.  Many associates at Famous already set high standards in this important area, but so many of us, including me, can make improvements, whether they are minor in nature, or a major overhaul.

We learn in many ways; by interacting with people, listening, observing, and reading, to name a few examples.  In fact, one of the best-selling books of all times is Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”.  It’s about successful industrialists and their common habits that contributed to their success.  It was interesting to learn how individuals develop good habits.  Napoleon Hill shared that successful people can create a habit if they have the discipline to stick to it for 30 straight days.  So if we really want to become more organized, which will make work and life easier, and save us time and energy every day, we can all accomplish that goal.

In order to become better organized, we must all focus on the details of our roles and develop a system and a process for everything we do.  The result of discipline and organization is the more efficient service we will be able to provide to our internal and external customers.  When our products, paperwork, and other materials are in the correct places, everything will run more smoothly.  This enhanced productivity will turn into greater profitability and help you and your families, because we share in our success.

One of the most successful leaders obsessive about organization was John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins.  His focus on organization contributed to many national championships. He incorporated discipline and winning habits as his teams prepared for success.  Coach Wooden had an organized process for everything, and he built on what was proven to work.  You may laugh at this example, but at the beginning of each season, he would teach every player on his team exactly how to pull up their socks and tie their shoes.  Why did he do this?  He knew that by not having their socks and shoelaces in exactly the proper place, competing players all around the nation would develop blisters late in the season.  This would hurt their performance.  Because of his organizational obsessiveness, come championship time, his team would be focused on their tasks at hand and not thinking about their sore feet, which would affect performance.

As we scale our business, and grow in this complex world that we work and live in, we need to be more intentional about this important subject.  If you believe your obsessiveness with organization lacks a higher standard, I challenge you to improve.  I encourage you to work together with other associates to figure out how to implement processes and systems that can be put in place to better support one another and our customers.