If you don’t know what you’re looking at below, that’s fair. But it might just change how you think about team efficiency.
And if you happened to guess that it was a barn + ramp + cow + hole in the floor, you’d be right.
I recently drew this–poorly, I might add–during a conversation with a client when we were discussing what they needed from their employees to increase efficiency.
I told them about a long-ago visit to a Quaker living history museum. That’s where I saw the barn and their simple but brilliant approach to feed their cows with minimal effort.
They built a ramp in their barn to a floor above the animals’ stalls with strategically placed holes. Instead of throwing bales over stall walls, they’d drive their wagon up the ramp and simply roll the bales down through the holes.
Brilliant. Simple. Smart. No wasted energy.
The Quakers figured out 200 years ago what most executive teams still haven’t: “working smarter, not harder” isn’t just about how you manage your time, or the level of effort—it’s about how your team works together.
I see teams—especially the executive teams I coach—repeating the same steps without ever questioning the system.
They do things the long way. They follow outdated processes that no longer serve them or the business. They carry unnecessary weight, because they’re just used to it.
Working smarter means asking:
- Why are we doing it this way?
- What assumptions are we operating under?
- Is there a better way we haven’t considered yet?
Smart collaboration isn’t about more effort. It’s about better design.
So what’s one process your team is still “throwing over the stall wall” that just needs a simple redesign?
Want to learn more about me, the Bob Ross of Executive Teams? Let’s talk!
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