Comments on: More Productivity Lessons from Taco Bell

By: Multitasking

Multitasking — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:42:42 +0000

simultaneously performing two or more things that require mental effort and attention. Switching task rapidly over a long period of time, you will have deeply engrained habits that cause stress and anxiety and dropped responsibilities and a myriad of productivity & focus problems.

Visit my multitasking blog and learn how to slow down the switchtasking in you life.

http://www.davecrenshaw.com/blog

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:43:04 +0000

Great points from both of you. Standardizing the way input is received would save a ton of time. Very often I get emails that I need to “decode” into a project; if a person would just do that thinking on their end and said clearly “here is the outcome I need,” that would make things so much more efficient.

As I think more about this, it seems like there’s yet an additional role beyond “cashier” and “chef”: consultant. “So, you want something with meat and lettuce, and some type of shell? And something to drink? Well, let’s see. That sounds like the taco combo meal. Is that right? OK. Oh, and do you want soft shell or hard shell?”

Finding ways to save time on repeating tasks is also huge. I’ve been trying to implement that more fully with some things, and it has been paying off. Macros are a really good example — it sounds like you can make a quite remarkable efficiency improvement through them.

By: Brian Current

Brian Current — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:11:58 +0000

The only thing I can add, based on my limited experience, is to also make sure that we are as efficient as possible throughout our processing new input and delivering the results when it comes to repetitive tasks.

For me, this relates to reports. I download data from our system and create reports to summarize and analyze data in Microsoft Excel. A huge amount of time can be wasted by performing the same steps each time I analyze and summarize new sets of data. Setting up macros to automate most or all of the report can eliminate hours of wasted time each week (or day!). The problem I see with co-workers is that they do not even know what is possible when it comes to automating much of Microsoft Office programs. So, they don’t even try to save time there. My rule is, if I’m going to do it more than 2 or 3 times, I’m going to write a macro for it. The time I spent learning to write VBA code and formulas, use pivot tables and layout a spreadsheet pays off for me every singe day.

I know a lot of jobs don’t rely on Excel like mine does, but I think the principle is that we should look for ways to save time on all the repetitive tasks associated with what we do.

By: Michael Brown

Michael Brown — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:31:44 +0000

This is an excellent post.

One thing that I would add to your list of 3 steps that can be taken to alleviate this problem is this: Standardize the Form of Information to be Processed.

For example, if every customer at Taco Bell used a Kiosk to enter their own order (and pay, even), and then just handed a standardized printout to the chef, then you could eliminate the step of processing the information, altogether.

Similarly, if you can teach/train/force your people to standardize the way that they deliver information to you (and the timing of delivery – in batches, as you would stress), this goes a long way to reducing information processing time and making the transition to productive action easier. This step also tends to eliminate errors and the need for additional communication.