What Managers Can Learn From Programmers

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One trait that a lot of programmers have in common is laziness.
Of course there’s something of an unflattering stereotype of programmers which tends to involve a gut and disheveled facial hair. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Rather, programmers are lazy because they are constantly taking shortcuts.
In fact, did you know that the term ‘hack’ was originally used in a coding sense to refer to ‘inelegant’ coding solutions that got the job done? This in turn was what ultimately led to the ‘lifehack’ trend that is now sweeping the globe and it’s why so many of us are constantly looking for shortcuts and more efficient ways of doing things.
But what does all this have to do with managers and business owners?

Time to Hack Your Business

When a programmer finds themselves doing anything more than once, they will almost always end up writing a program to do it instead. Making long lists over and over again? Why not make a piece of code that will do it for you instead? You’ll invest more time up-front but ultimately you’ll never have to do that job again and you’ll save countless hours.
Using the same routine in a piece of code over and over again? A programmer will write a ‘sub routine’ which they can ‘call’ at any time to perform that function on an automated basis. Even the structure of programming is built this way.
But it’s not really laziness, rather it is ‘efficiency’ and it’s ‘systems thinking’. Why would you spend lots of time doing the same thing over and over again when a program could do it for you? And especially when time equals money?
So how do you approach your business with this mindset? The solution is to start thinking about your business more like a system and to think about the smaller component aspects of your business as ‘microsystems’ that make up the whole.
Now you can treat it like code. Look at the jobs you are repeating most often. How could they be done better and more quickly to save you time and money? Likewise, how could you save yourself from making mistakes?
Sometimes, this will actually mean asking a coder to write you a piece of software to do what you previously had your team doing. In other cases, it will simply mean changing the order that work is done or introducing a new flow chart or checklist. Either way, everything can be made more efficient and thus save you time and money.