Have you ever seen an ironman competition in person? Amazing. Wake up at 5am and make your way down to watch thousands of athletes tread water for what seems to be an eternity. Then - Bang! Each athlete is off to endure hours and hours of mental hurdles and physical pain. The race consists of a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, followed by a marathon! Yes - that’s a grand total of 140.6 miles! If that wasn’t amazing enough, you should see the people who do it. This isn’t just for the young extremely fit people of the world. People of all shapes and sizes put their body and mind through this torture.For what?
So I asked two of my friends who dedicate a significant portion of their lives to this, “Why?”
“To push myself, to achieve something nobody thought I could do,” they answered. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Me … I could never do that. It’s too tough.”
Both friends look at me and said, “Well that’s a defeatist attitude. You don’t do this in one day … it takes dedication, proper planning, a good training program, and constant work. You could do it.”
As I watched them collapse across the finish line in complete joy, those words stuck with me. I thought about work and approaches used to succeed in labor management.
Staffing success is definitely not as hard as completing an ironman, but to achieve significant results you must be dedicated, plan properly, implement strategy and work at it daily. And there are staff scheduling and shift management tools that can help.
Work at it daily and you’ll reach your objectives. See you at the finish line!