[Issue #047] The Clock, Not the Steam Engine

I’ve always been a “how” guy.

How does this work? How did that happen?

And right behind it is my second-favorite question: why?

As a kid, that curiosity mostly filled boxes with parts from things I’d taken apart and never figured out how to put back together.

By ten or eleven I was mowing lawns for money, and I kept at it until I was about sixteen. Those old mowers had pull cords, and pull cords break. When one did, the whole starter had to come apart and go back together, spring and all. I learned a lot about how things work.

I also learned I didn’t want to be a mechanic. I loved what was inside. I just didn’t always have the patience to sit there and problem-solve my way back out.

These days, business problems and people problems hold my attention longer, but I can still get lost looking inside a mechanical watch. The kind you wind.

I can stare at all those little pieces inside and wonder how anybody figured out how to make them.

Think about it. Tiny parts, every one of them made by somebody, every one strong enough to do its job, stacked on top of each other and working together. It is finesse, patience and elegance you can hold in your hand.

And the watch we know today wasn’t the work of one person. Somebody imagined a mechanism. Others came along, improved it and proved it. Over hundreds of years, mechanical timekeeping moved from towers to pockets to wrists.

Eventually, people even figured out how to make a clock accurate enough to help sailors determine where they were while their ship rolled across the ocean. It turns out that a pendulum clock that worked beautifully on land couldn’t keep reliable time on a rocking ship.

Seriously. How do you even begin figuring that out?

The clock organized us

But something else about clocks caught my attention recently.

Most people associate the Industrial Revolution with the steam engine. Fair enough. Steam powered factories, locomotives and ships. But in 1934, historian Lewis Mumford made a different case:

“The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age.”

That’s quite a claim for something we now barely notice.

But consider what reliable timekeeping made possible. People could agree on when to begin, when to arrive, and when the next part of the work needed to happen. Separate activities could be coordinated around a shared measure.

Steam powered us. The clock organized us.

And organizing matters because our work connects. What one person can do next often depends on what somebody else finishes first.

A powerful locomotive can get you to the station. But if your connecting train has already left, you’re going to be sitting there for a while.

That got me thinking about our company.

Plenty of steam. Everybody waiting.

For years, I was the main art director for our websites, videos and graphic design projects.

I had experience. I had opinions. And I cared deeply about the quality of what we delivered.

I also had a calendar that apparently needed about three more days in every week.

A team member would be ready for a website review, but I couldn’t meet today. Tomorrow wasn’t much better. So we’d move it three days out. Sometimes four or five. Sometimes into the following week.

Meanwhile, people waited.

They found other things to do, of course. Nobody was just staring at the wall. But the project they were supposed to move forward was stuck until I could give it my attention.

When we had around ten employees, there were regularly one or two people waiting on me. Add outside vendors, and the number of people depending on our work grew. So did the problem.

Sometimes a vendor waited weeks for me to give them what they needed.

Everyone had work to do. Everyone wanted to make progress.

And I was the bottleneck.

I thought I had a problem managing my time. But my calendar was managing everybody else’s time, too. If I couldn’t get to a review until Thursday, the next part of their work couldn’t begin until Thursday.

My availability had become the company’s schedule.

Hiring more people couldn’t solve that on its own. It would just create a longer line outside my door.

Why being the bottleneck felt “responsible”

Here’s the uncomfortable part.

I liked being involved.

Some of that was my own desire to feel needed and significant. It felt good to contribute, to have the answer, to help make the work better.

But I also believed that responsible small business owners showed up for their client - personally.

I’d watched owners try to manage remotely before they and their companies were ready. They withdrew too soon, leaving people without enough preparation, support or direction. Employees and customers paid for it.

I didn’t want to become that owner.

So I held on.

Besides, a lot of what I knew was difficult to explain. How do you teach someone why a design feels wrong? Why one message works and another doesn’t? How do you pass along judgment you’ve spent years developing?

And when was I supposed to train people? I was already behind.

Stopping to teach someone felt like adding another project to a pile I couldn’t finish.

Yet every time I postponed that work, I extended the time everyone would depend on me.

We had to organize the work differently

There wasn’t one breakthrough that fixed everything. We learned this progressively, and sometimes awkwardly.

We became clearer about what people were responsible for, what good work looked like, and which decisions they had the authority to make. We invested time in training and helping them develop the judgment the work required.

We also established a dependable meeting rhythm.

Our regular staff meetings and every-other-week one-on-one meetings gave us time to look at what people were working on, where they were stuck, and what they needed.

People could ask questions between those meetings, too.

Our regular meetings gave people a dependable time to get my attention. Clearer authority meant they didn’t have to wait for that meeting to make every decision. We were finally organizing our time so their work could keep moving.

That combination mattered.

A meeting on the calendar wouldn’t have helped much if everyone still needed my approval for everything. And giving people authority without preparing them would have created a different set of problems.

Kathryn continued developing her skills, her eye and her understanding of what works. Today, she has guided entire client websites through completion that I haven’t seen until they were finished.

The client was thrilled.

The team did good work.

And somehow the company survived without my opinion on every page.

Think about the difference. A website review used to sit for days waiting for an opening in my calendar. Now an entire website can move through the company without needing that opening.

Kathryn and I are still responsible for what goes out the door. Part of carrying that responsibility is making sure we have capable people who understand their work, have the authority to do it, and can get support when they need it.

That has freed me to focus on work that needs my attention.

It has also made work more satisfying for our people. They can finish things. They can see their contribution. They can be proud of what they’ve accomplished and know we’re proud of them, too.

That brings me back to the watch.

All those little parts have different jobs. The engineering allows their movement to work together, at the right pace, to keep reliable time.

Our company needed that kind of coordination. People needed to understand their part, have the ability and authority to do it, and know when someone else was depending on them.

For years, too much of that depended on me finding time.

Our regular meetings created a dependable rhythm for questions, decisions and support. Training and clearer authority allowed people to keep working between those meetings.

We already had plenty of steam. We were finally building a better clock.

Where is the work waiting for you?

When a company is struggling to get enough done, it’s tempting to look for more steam.

More people. More effort. More hours.

Sometimes we need those things.

But before you ask everyone to push harder, consider how much of their effort is already waiting for you to become available.

Waiting for a decision.

Waiting for a review.

Waiting for information only you have.

You may be working harder than anyone in the company and still be the reason other people can’t move forward.

I know because I’ve been that guy.

Something to try this week

So here’s something to try this week, if you’re brave enough.

Choose two or three people you trust who work closely with you—members of your leadership team or your direct reports—and ask:

“Where am I becoming the bottleneck? Where does waiting on me keep you or the company from being more effective, more timely or more efficient?”

Then listen.

You may want to explain how busy you are. They probably already know.

What you’re trying to discover is where the work gets stuck and what would allow it to move.

Pick one place to begin. Perhaps someone needs training or authority to make a decision. Perhaps they need a dependable time to get your input so they can plan the next part of their work.

Then pay attention to what happens after that change. Can they finish their part? Can the next person begin? Does the work move forward without everyone having to scramble?

That’s the kind of coordination that makes a company’s effort more productive.

I still find it amazing that someone figured out how to make all those tiny parts work together inside a watch.

Leading a company gives us our own version of that challenge.

Before you ask your people for more steam, make sure the clock isn’t waiting on you.