"At my last position, I felt strongly about how dysfunctional the workflow was. We were restricted by the layout of the building we were working out of; our loading dock was on the opposite side of the building from the warehouse. This slowed down the productivity of our shipping and receiving, often delayed shipments, and made the timeframes we promised to our customers somewhat unreliable. I felt like we could be doing so much better for our customers who come to us for their needs. Customers want their needs met quickly. So, I re-examined our processes and asked lots of questions, and everyone said the same thing - it's been tried before and won't work.

One day, I decided that wasn't good enough for me. Others may have tried before and failed, but I wanted to learn why they failed. So I studied what had been tried before and proceeded from there. An emergency exit on the warehouse side of the building exited to the employee parking lot, which was fenced off. I suggested we remove the gate, receive shipments over there, and build an awning off the exit door where they could break down the pallets and hand-truck the shipment through the door. I promised that our revenue would increase with faster shipping times and more reliable service. I got the green light, did the remodel over a weekend, and lived up to my promise, increasing revenue by 20% that year alone."