Does Your Business Need Red Nail Polish?

Last month I moved into a new apartment, two blocks from Coolidge Corner in beautiful Brookline, MA. With that apartment came two keys, one for my unit and one for the front door of the building itself.

The keys look identical. And so, when I first moved in, Cynthia the property manager put a yellow sticker on one (my unit) and a blue sticker on the other (the building). Problem solved.

Within a few weeks, however, both stickers had fallen off and I no longer knew which key was for which door. I tried to remember their order on the key ring, but I have to admit that I had trouble keeping it straight.

Many times I had to try both keys (in both doors) as I came and went. It wasn’t a huge problem-in fact, I immediately forgot about it once I was home-but it sure was persistent. Finally, yesterday, I dropped a dab of red nail polish on the unit key and my problem has disappeared for good!

Believe it or not, I see people “suffering” in their businesses with these kinds of issues every day. Little things nag at them, over and over and over again-the kinds of things that are large enough to be annoying, but too small to get fixed.

This past Tuesday, for example, I was sitting with my client Steve at his desk. We were working on setting up his accounting software and I needed to connect the program to his online banking account. I asked him to enter his username and password.

There was a blank stare, followed by, “Oh yeah” as he entered the info. It didn’t work. Steve rifled through his desk for a notebook that contained his passwords. Then he said, “I think I changed this but I’m pretty sure I didn’t write it down.” Next, he clicked the “forgot password” link on the bank’s website and we waited for the “reset your password” email to arrive into his inbox.

You get the idea.

When I asked him why he didn’t have a system to manage his passwords he said, “It’s not that big of a pain and I don’t want to take the time to figure out something better.”

As with my keys, it was large enough to be annoying but too small to get fixed.

But it’s more than just annoying. By tolerating inefficiencies in our workday-over and over, day after day-we lose hours of time that could be spent in other, more productive ways.

The solution is simple: Fix the small inefficiencies in your business (and life) that you are tolerating. They are getting in the way and, particularly as a small business owner, you can’t afford the wasted time and energy. In order to succeed, you need to continually improve the way your work gets done.

Keep in mind, by the way, that solving these little problems and streamlining your life is not about “teching” up your business for the sake of technology. It’s about leveraging your time so that you can get more done, work less hard, and maybe even take a day off once in a while.

The answer to my problem? Red nail polish on the key. The answer to Steve’s? Click here.