Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and golajving. This
Speaker 1: is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fellavledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode six sixty one. Most leaders are chasing growth,
Speaker 2: more revenue, more customers, more volume, bigger numbers. And while
Speaker 2: all of that sounds great, here's what gets missed. Most
Speaker 2: of the time you were already sitting on profit. You
Speaker 2: were just bleeding it out through operational waste. Waste is
Speaker 2: not always obvious. It rarely shows up as a big,
Speaker 2: flashing red light. It hides in small habits, quiet inefficiencies,
Speaker 2: in things people say like that's just how we do it.
Speaker 2: That phrase alone is one of the most expensive sentences
Speaker 2: in leadership. Operational waste is anything that consumes time, money, energy,
Speaker 2: or focus without producing value. And the scary part is
Speaker 2: it becomes normal. Teams get used to it, leaders stop
Speaker 2: seeing it, and it becomes part of the culture. So
Speaker 2: today I want to give you a way to flip that,
Speaker 2: to turn operational waste into profit without adding a single
Speaker 2: new customer. First, you need to start looking at your
Speaker 2: operation like a leak, not a machine. Most leaders treat
Speaker 2: their organization like a machine. Input equals output. If you
Speaker 2: want more output, you add more input, more people, more hours,
Speaker 2: more resources. But what if the problem is not input.
Speaker 2: What if the problem problem is leakage. Every wasted minute,
Speaker 2: every duplicated task, every miscommunication, every unnecessary step that is
Speaker 2: a leak, and those leaks are draining your profit quietly
Speaker 2: every single day second. You need to identify the five
Speaker 2: biggest waste zones. Here is where they usually live. Time waste,
Speaker 2: the people waiting around, unclear priorities, meetings that go nowhere.
Speaker 2: Process waste steps that exist because they always have not
Speaker 2: because they add value. Communication waste, repeating instructions, unclear expectations,
Speaker 2: fixing preventable mistakes, resource waste supplies overused or underused or
Speaker 2: poorly managed. Talent waste, people capable of more that are
Speaker 2: stuck doing less. If you want to turn waste into profit,
Speaker 2: you don't start with a spreadsheet. You start by walking
Speaker 2: your operation and asking one simple question, over and over again,
Speaker 2: why are we doing this? Not in an aggressive way,
Speaker 2: in a curious way, in a leadership way, and you'll
Speaker 2: be shocked at how many answers come back as I
Speaker 2: don't know or we've always done it this way. That
Speaker 2: is where profit is hiding. Third, you need to assign
Speaker 2: ownership to waste. Here's a leadership mistake. Everyone is responsible,
Speaker 2: which means no one is responsible. If you want to
Speaker 2: eliminate waste, you need to make it someone's job, not
Speaker 2: as punishment as ownership. Give someone the role of identifying inefficiencies,
Speaker 2: empower them to speak up, protect them when they challenge
Speaker 2: outdated processes. Because the moment people feel safe pointing out waste,
Speaker 2: operation starts getting sharper. And Fourth, measure what matters. You
Speaker 2: don't need a complicated dashboard, You need visibility. How long
Speaker 2: does it take to accomplish a task? How often are
Speaker 2: errors happening? How much time is spent fixing problems that
Speaker 2: should not exist? Where are you spending money without a
Speaker 2: clear return. When you start measuring these things, patterns appear,
Speaker 2: and those patterns lead directly to profit. Fifth, remove one
Speaker 2: thing at a time. Leaders get excited and try to
Speaker 2: fix everything at once, and that creates chaos. Pick one process,
Speaker 2: one inefficiency, one leak, fix it, simplify it, eliminate it,
Speaker 2: and then move to the next. Small operational improvements compound
Speaker 2: fast and unlike chasing revenue, this is profit you keep.
Speaker 2: So let me give you a real example. If your
Speaker 2: team wastes ten minutes per shift on something unnecessary and
Speaker 2: you have ten people, that's one hundred minutes per day
Speaker 2: over a year. That turns into thousands of hours, thousands
Speaker 2: of hours of payroll, energy, and lost opportunity. You're not
Speaker 2: just wasting time, your burning profit. Now flip that eliminate
Speaker 2: that ten minutes, reclaim those hours, reinvest that time into
Speaker 2: better service, better preparation, better performance. That is how waste
Speaker 2: becomes profit. And Sixth, build a culture that hates waste.
Speaker 2: This is where leadership shows up. If you tolerate inefficiency,
Speaker 2: your team will normalize it. If you challenge it, your
Speaker 2: team will start looking for it. You want people asking
Speaker 2: is this the best way to do this? Every single day.
Speaker 2: You want your team thinking like owner, not just employees,
Speaker 2: because when people start protecting time, protecting resources, and protecting effort,
Speaker 2: your entire operation tightens up. And when your operation tightens up,
Speaker 2: profit follows. Seventh, understand this is not about cutting corners.
Speaker 2: This is about this is not about doing less, It's
Speaker 2: about doing better. There's a difference between efficiency and cheapness.
Speaker 2: Efficiency respects time, resources, and people. Cheapness cuts quality, cuts
Speaker 2: corners and creates bigger problems later. Your goal is to
Speaker 2: remove waste without lowering standards. That is real leadership. And finally,
Speaker 2: this is where your credibility is built. Anyone can chase growth.
Speaker 2: That's easy to talk about. Very few leaders are disciplined
Speaker 2: enough to eliminate waste because it requires attention, honesty, and
Speaker 2: a willingness to challenge the way things have always been done.
Speaker 2: But when you do this, your team notices. They see
Speaker 2: a leader who pays attention. They see a leader who
Speaker 2: respects their time. They see a leader who is serious
Speaker 2: about performance, and that builds trust. So here's your move today.
Speaker 2: Walk your operation, find one leak, fix it. Do that
Speaker 2: consistently and you will not need to chase profit. You
Speaker 2: will uncover it. So profit is not always something you
Speaker 2: go out and find. Sometimes it's something you stop losing.
Speaker 2: Look closer, it is what is happening inside your operation.
Speaker 2: The answer is already there, waiting for you to take
Speaker 2: ownership and act. And if you want more free leadership resources,
Speaker 2: head over to Paul Falavalito dot com and click on
Speaker 2: free stuff. I have twenty five free leadership documents you
Speaker 2: can download and start using today. This has been the
Speaker 2: seven minute Leadership podcast, and I thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot
Speaker 1: com