Lego-Inspired Proactive Planning

My family loves Legos and not in a "nostalgic, we keep some in the basement from when our kids were little" way; more in a "we are still buying new sets to build for everyone from my 13 year old

son to my 51 year old husband" way (those 80's nostalgia sets are FIRE). And through all these years, no one in my family has swallowed a brick or mini head, but I was still intrigued when I saw a reel about a change Lego made in 2013, adding barium to the materials so that when kids inevitably swallowed a brick, it would be easy to find on an x-ray.

Here's the thing - it's not true.

Adding barium was something Lego considered, tested, and then rejected, but nonetheless the story of barium in bricks lives on in internet lore. Perhaps one reason it captures the imagination is the creative and proactive thinking of planning for a solution to the likely mistakes or accidents that occur.

At least, that's what the story got my mind thinking about...being conscious of frequent mistakes and misuses and putting steps in place to address the likely mishaps. How can we do this for our organizations? The first step to this change is thinking though or even cataloging mistakes, especially the small ones that occur frequently. This may seem painful at first, but the benefit is worth it. By being aware, organizations can make plans to reduce issues and make a smoother system for everyone involved.

Let's bring this to concept to life with a few examples:

• Reimbursement - Having the flexibility for employees to cover expenses and needs without prior invoicing and disbursements is a critical tool in a fast-paced work environment, but too often the process of reimbursement gets messy, such as

  • requests get delayed and lost in the system; it can feel like a black hole of submitting and then waiting for funds

  • requests are put in too late

  • receipts aren't legible or get lost once submitted

  • tracking the request to a specific event, grant, or budget line becomes confusing

  Solve:

  Create a system for submission and tracking progress, whether with a 3rd party or something as simple as a google form that requires the submission to include the key information needed by accounting and spreadsheet that's updated with expected dates

  
  

• Annual subscriptions - organizations often have software, services, or systems that renew annually. Two kinds of mistakes can be made here, but luckily the same solve can address both. One mistake is missing the renewal date and the service or software expires, causing a break in availability for the organization. The second is having auto-renew on and not being aware of the next charge date. Sure, you don't get interrupted service, you've also missed the opportunity to re-evaluate and/or renegotiate.

Solve:

Add a reminder to your calendar that gives you enough time before the renewal to do your appropriate due diligence and take the right actions to have the software, services, or systems you want without a break or inconvenience to staff or members.

• Email lists - keeping track of who belongs on a targeted email list can get jumbled, but when someone is mistakenly left off or mistakenly left on, it can create a feeling of disconnect between the email recipient and the organization. Also, key information and be missed or shared with the wrong people.

Solve:

There are a few solutions that can help with this and a combination of these would likely be best for most organizations - Be careful when creating lists to make the list name clear as to who it is, have a limited group of people who can create lists, have a second person review the recipient list, require a date stamp on exported lists, and don't update last year's list - start fresh.

We can't prevent every mistake, but we can prepare for the ones that happen most often and create a stronger, more resilient organization as a result.