Doing More with Less
I love the fall and that is largely in part due to the start of football season. This weeks’ message is inspired by the early weeks of the college football season, when many games are lopsided and are used as a “tune up” prior to the conference schedule. During this time, the “power” football schools often pay large sums of money to smaller schools to come play them at home so they can make money on hosting a game in their stadium and get an almost automatic win. Well last weekend someone forgot to remind the small schools that they are supposed to lose. Appalachian St. (18 point underdog) beat 6th ranked Texas A&M, Marshall (20 point underdog) beat 8th ranked Notre Dame, and Georgia Southern (23 point underdog) beat Nebraska. Those “big” programs paid over $1.2M each for the privilege of losing to what was supposed to be an inferior opponent. And to put this in even more context, each of those prominent football schools annually bring in $75-$100M in revenue from their football programs alone compared to the $6-$10M in revenue generated by their opponents.
Where am I going with this you ask? I think it is inspiring to see people, teams, and organizations doing more with less. When money flows in freely it also has a tendency to flow out freely. When resources are abundant, often they are not used to their maximum abilities. When there is ample time, projects tend to take longer than needed. The opposite occurs, though, when those things are scarce. Money must be spent wisely on only what is necessary. Resources are used many times over beyond their original purpose. And when we have a limited amount of time to get something done, we figure out how to make it happen in that short window.
We certainly have our fair share of resources at Footers and I’m grateful for that. What I challenged our team to do this week, was to not take those resources for granted. To make the most of what we have and maximize our potential. There are many examples of companies putting this into practice every day. Zappos is a company that is known for creating a great place to work and one of their core values is actually “Do More with Less”. This video explains what it means to them. And my friend Banks Benitez has been experimenting with the four day work week. Not as a means to do less work, but to see if he and his teammates are able to accomplish the same amount of work in a shorter time period.
The small schools mentioned above have less resources. Their facilities pale in comparison with their power counterparts, they don’t attract the most talented players. Yet on this past Saturday they each found a way to squeeze the most out of their ability and beat the odds. It’s easy to throw money at problems, especially when there is plenty of it. But encouraging your team to do more with less might lead to heightened creativity, improved efficiencies, and some amazing breakthroughs!