Are You “Sizing The Rounder?”
By: Roland Frasier
Tags: Productivity, Efficiency, Productivity Tips, Getting Things Done, Procrastination

Are You “Sizing The Rounder?”

In another life, my wife worked in a clothing department in a major department store chain called Nordstrom.

Interestingly enough, Nordstrom is widely regarded as one of the best companies to work for, for customer experience, customer service and an excellent executive training program.

In this case, she had just been promoted to management with a significant increase in responsibilities.

One evening, she was putting all of the correct clothing sizes in place on one of those round displays that is a circle with a metal bar going all the way round so that you can hang clothes and organize them by size.

This circular display unit is called a “rounder,” and organizing the clothes on it is a practice known in the trade as “sizing the rounder.”

That’s just what my wife was doing that evening.

It was familiar work, and she actually enjoyed the rewarding feeling when everything was in its proper place.

As she was putting all the sizes in their proper slots, a management supervisor approached her and said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m sizing the rounder,” my wife replied.

This should have been no surprise to the supervisor.

After all, my wife had been sizing the rounder for the past 18 months and prided herself on having one of the tidiest departments in the store.

“No, no, you don’t do that kind of work anymore!” the supervisor said.

“You’re in management now, and that’s not the highest and best use of your time.”

My wife stopped arranging the clothes on the rounder, thinking about what her supervisor had just said.

“Not the best use of my time?” she asked, processing her supervisor’s comments out loud in a sort of half-whisper.

Her manager scrunched up her face a bit and then explained further…

“Look, you’re in management now.”

“You have a lot of new responsibilities you need to focus on. Bigger, more important responsibilities.”

“We have floor associates who can handle things like this that you used to do.”

“We want you managing and working on improving the customer experience and developing the associates who work under you, not sizing the rounder.”

Sizing the rounder was “comfort work” for my wife.

It was familiar, mindless, and oddly fulfilling… comfortable to do, had a definite stopping point, and felt good when complete.

The problem is that most truly meaningful activities in your business are none of those things.

The greatest growth comes from when we are operating OUTSIDE our comfort zone.

That’s when the most significant change occurs, and usually it is anything BUT comfortable!

Similarly, a wise business owner understands that improvement is a never-ending process.

There is no stopping point where you will be able to say that the most important things in your business are “done.”

While there are tasks within any business that have very definite starting and stopping points, “paying the bills,” “completing a client project,” “closing a sale,” even “sizing the rounder,” those tasks are generally not the big, important things that the founder/owner/CEO should be focused on.

Those tasks are generally things that an employee or contractor can do, things that can be “hired out” for completion.

The big, important things, like setting strategy for your business, creating and improving your customer experience, adjusting your product or service line to take advantage of industry trends and better serve your customers, those are things that don’t really have any stopping point.

They’re never done.

They are processes, not tasks.

And, unfortunately, because there is no definite stopping point, you don’t really get the opportunity to pat yourself on the back and marvel at the amazing job you did once those things are complete.

They never are.

You can feel fulfilled that you are continuing to work on your business, but the truth is that your business is never really “done,” never really “finished.”

Not until you sell it…

or quit.

I see the top people in our businesses doing “comfort work” all the time.

One of our CFOs is balancing the checkbook, instead of creating the business models and complex budgets we need to better run the business, predict revenue and allocate capital and resources.

A sales manager is reorganizing the files on her computer, instead of reviewing the recorded call logs from the most successful and least successful rep calls over the past week to determine what’s working and not working, so that she can adjust and improve our sales scripts.

And, I even see it in a business partner, who feels good because she just built the landing pages for a new offer that we are launching in one of our business units, instead of taking the time to expand our build team capacity to meet the increased demands of our expanding business.

Oh, and just in case you think that yours truly is immune to this kind of thing, let me tell you that I most definitely am not.

I, too, find myself “sizing the rounder” more often than I would like.

I sometimes lapse into doing the “comfort work” of answering comments on social media, instead of completing a major agreement template for our country-wide partners who have already indicated they are ready to sign up and start offering our products internationally.

I may even find myself writing this content for you right now instead of sending that agreement out! 😁

Oops!

Well, at least I’ve reached conscious incompetence on that one!

The challenge with comfort work is that it’s, well…

comforting.

It’s seductive, because it’s easy and it feels good.

Sizing the rounder is like slipping into your most comfy old jeans and sweatshirt and settling in to binge-watch entire seasons of mindless Netflix shows while eating popcorn.

It feels great…

but you are accomplishing nothing.

Worse still, it’s taking you away from doing the real work that will actually move you closer to your goals for yourself and your business.

So, the next time you find yourself feeling good about accomplishing some menial task in your business, ask yourself this question…

“Am I just sizing the rounder?”

If so, then stop it and hire or contract with someone else to do that work right away.

Get yourself focused on doing the real work… the less comforting but critical to your success work that actually moves the needle and that can’t be delegated to someone else.

Oh, and don’t forget.

EVERYTHING can be delegated.

The moment you believe that you are indispensable to your business, you have lost.

And whether you’re ACTUALLY indispensable or not, either way you still have lost.

If you are right and you ARE indispensable, then in that case you have built yourself a prison and a job, as well as a business that cannot be sold unless you can be sold with it. (Spoiler alert, you cannot sell human beings last time I checked!).

And, if you are wrong, then you just need to get over yourself and realize that there are many competent, capable people out there who can do what you are doing even better than you.

You just need to take the time to hire or contract them and train them and then get the heck out of the way and let them free you from your biggest constraint…

You!

Either way, don’t forget that you are C-suite management now.

You’re a founder, owner, CEO, and the one thing that you should definitely NOT be doing is…

Sizing the rounder.