Recently, a friend who owns his own handyman business was staying at our house. He knew we had bought some lights to go above our kitchen island, and he was also aware we had not installed them yet. Those of you who know me probably realize I’m about the last person you’d want to change a light fixture. While my wife is quite good with that type of task, we had been busy and just hadn’t quite gotten to it yet.

You could tell it was bugging my friend Gary. He wanted to help, he knew he could make the change, and he was itching to get it done. Right after the “Okay, if you’re sure you want to do it,” he was up and getting it handled. He had great knowledge of what was needed, a system for handling the project, and knocked it out cleanly and efficiently.

As we admired his work, he said, “See? Super easy.”

I replied, “Yes Gary. That was simple, and thank you. But it wasn’t easy.” Just because you know how to do something— maybe even with your eyes closed—doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. It took our friend Gary years to know how to make changing out a light fixture in a kitchen look so easy. 

How This Information Can Make a Difference4Your Organization

Employees acquire skills and learn how to build their own systems and processes (well, the good ones do, anyway). Find the right people to help you accomplish your project goals, and assign the proper team members to the needed tasks. It’s a simple solution, but that doesn’t mean it’s “easy”. You can admire people for making things look easy, but make sure you pause to admire the effort that went into the skill it takes to make it look easy.

A quick example comes to mind.

We’ve been buying media for 16 years now, and for us, it’s “easy”. For our company, it’s acquired knowledge, a created system, strong relationships, and a collaborative approach. We may make it look easy, and we have dozens of clients who count on us to make these buys work for them. The key to it is simple, but it’s generally not an easy task.

Gary probably wouldn’t want to buy media any more than I wanted to change out those cool new light fixtures. I knew when to let Gary help me. Is there something you’ve been holding onto that someone could provide a simple solution for?

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