Why the task itself produces no revenue
Some work brings money in. Some work only moves information from one place to another.
Retyping produces nothing: no customer served, no job moved forward, no decision made.
Not every business has this problem, and some should leave it alone.
Most of these can be done better. Whether it's worth doing is a separate question. What follows is one common form of the problem, described in general terms, because your version will differ. These are possible challenges, not a description of your business, and some should be left exactly as they are. If it sounds like your week, that's worth a conversation.
Watch: Your Best Person Is Doing Your Worst Work
Sound familiar?
- A task is described as 'it only takes a minute' by everyone who does it.
- Nobody has ever added up how many times a week that minute happens.
- The person doing it was hired for something else entirely.
- The work has to happen, but nobody asks whether a person has to be the one doing it.
The idea in short
Retyping is the clearest example: an invoice copied from a document into a system is worth exactly what it was worth as a document. No customer was served, no job moved, nothing was decided. The information simply changed location, and whatever the person doing it earns, those hours bought nothing.
Why it stays invisible
Overhead that arrives in large pieces gets scrutinized once a year. This kind arrives in three-minute pieces, dozens of times a week, spread across people hired to do something else. It has no invoice, no renewal date, and no moment at which anyone has to approve it, so it gets described as though it were nothing: it only takes a minute, it's just part of the job.
The arithmetic nobody does
Minutes each time, times frequency, times a fully loaded hourly rate. The number is usually larger than expected, and the reason is always frequency: people estimate the minutes accurately and underestimate how many times a week it happens, because no single occurrence is memorable.
What actually matters about it
The hours were necessary. The information genuinely had to move, and somebody genuinely had to move it. What was not necessary is that a person did it by hand at the highest possible price for the outcome. The work has to happen; it does not have to be a human being doing it manually.
Questions worth asking about your own operation
- What task in your business does someone describe as 'it only takes a minute'?
- How many times a week does that minute actually happen?
- Is the person doing it the same person who was hired to do something else?
If this sounds familiar
Bring me the version you actually have. I'll learn how the process really works before I suggest anything. If it isn't worth changing, or isn't a fit for me, I'll say so. Talk through a problem