Build Your Processes To Flow Like Water
Learn what is useful, leave out the rest. Do not waste your time and energy on things that will not help you achieve your goals.
As a Six Sigma Master, I have had the pleasure of instructing, teaching and leading hundreds, if not thousands of professionals in their pursuits of efficient lives and business’. While I listen and read countless articles on this topic, I tend try and simplify every step associated with this practice. However, the greatest advice I have ever heard is simple:
Be like water.
The source for this comes from a forty-year-old interview with martial arts star Bruce Lee. Most people know Bruce Lee for his fighting prowess, but he was also a big proponent of Eastern philosophy. Cobbling together various aspects of Taoism, Confucianism and just about anything else he could read, he pulled together a life philosophy that was uniquely his own.
This approach was reflected in his fighting style, Jeet Kune Do. Jeet Kune Do relied on experimentation to get results. Lee would incorporate any styles or moves into his own that worked. If they did not work, he would get rid of them. (A simple concept, yet so many find it difficult to weed out all the unnecessary steps, rhetoric, or negativity).
This philosophy is fascinating because it is a core concept driving most successful Service Desks. Learn what is useful, leave out the rest. Do not waste your time and energy on things that will not help you achieve your goals.
Here is the full quote from that interview:
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”
– Bruce Lee
Be like water making its way through the cracks.
No matter where you go or what you want to do, you will face obstacles. That is a universal truth about life, and business. The trick is to not stop just because you come headfirst into a barrier – the trick is to find a crack in those barriers so you can get around them.
Water is formless. It is so shapeless that it can fit into the tiniest cracks. When your Service Desk runs into barriers, you must find that crack, no matter how small it is, and squeeze your way through it. Seize opportunities that come your way, no matter how small they seem to be. Sometimes all you need is the tiniest crack to reach your full potential.
Do not be assertive but adjust to the object and you shall find a way round or through it.
Build a desk that is always learning, always changing. Becoming better takes subtle change and adjustment. It is not about compromise – it’s about finding the best path forward.
Keep in mind the old idiom of someone trying to “put a square peg into a round hole”. Success might mean ditching the square peg and trying something else. Love experimentation. Learn to hold on to what works and avoid what doesn’t.
Empty your mind, be formless.
Wisdom is a formless state of mind. It comes with emptying your mind of all pre-conceived notions about the world, other people and especially yourself.
Rid your Service Desk agents useless thinking – negative thoughts, unnecessary worrying and doubt. These thoughts are rigid and will only weigh them down. Open their minds to all possibilities and options. This will help them think clearly. It will help clear their head in order to make better decisions. They will flow naturally to the direction you want your Service Desk to go.
Water can flow or it can crash.
It is water’s nature to be formless, but that does not make it any less powerful. One minute your Service Desk can be flowing along, but the next it can be crashing against powerful waves. That is the beauty of water. It has a calm pleasing nature to it, but also a unique strength all on its own.
When you slide your hand into water, it will smoothly wrap itself around your hand. If you slap the water, it will feel hard and push back. Whenever your Desk runs into trouble, think about what Bruce Lee said and meditate on water. Usually problems or those issues facing your Service Desk are a result of being too rigid or closing yourself off to different possibilities and/or alternatives that may be out of the box.
If this happens, step back, and remember to be shapeless like water. Be formless, not rigid.
Water is always changing—a powerful force of nature. As Bruce Lee would say, “Be water, my friend.”
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