There are many great things about being a “hands on” leader. Making sure that you know each detail of every project allows you to really understand the reasons why things happen. Understanding the reasons why allows you to come up with great solutions to those challenges. As time marches on though, several things start to change. One of those things can be pretty good for you on your path. That is to say that you will begin to rise through the ranks or increase in success. Moving on up is a pretty darn good thing, if you ask me. The only problem is that if you truly are fully “hands on” in your world it, becomes a bigger challenge. With more people and processes under your responsibility, keeping track of all of them is tough.
Another thing that changes over time is, well, everything. As technology keeps changing, it disrupts everything we thought we knew. Putting package slips in a mailbox used to be a great way of letting a person know that they have a package. After all, they would check their mailbox almost every day. Now of course, they don’t. Many people only check mailboxes once a month, or even less! Technology changes things that we wouldn’t remotely expect too. Take this surprising finding from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor: “Thirty years ago, eight in 10 Americans ages 17-19 had a driver’s license. Today, it’s six in 10”.
Huh? Why would so many fewer teens be getting drivers licenses? This trend seems to be linked with internet usage and social media. Apparently, the more one connects online the less one feels the need to connect in person. Also, social media allows many teens to quickly and easily find rides to where ever they are going within their social network. Lastly, fewer teens feel that a car represents “freedom” as they did a few decades ago. In order to drive a car you have to “unplug” from your mobile device and stop talking to friends. This is viewed as a large negative to teens.
All of this is to say that technology keeps changing the world in ways we cannot predict and the best policies and procedures from a few years ago may no longer be viable. Take package logging software. When we came out with the predecessor to our EZTrackIt package tracking system in 2008, we were the first to market with that type of an offering. There was literally no one else like us marketing to higher education. It was a tough, uphill battle to help people to understand that there was a problem with logging packages by hand, but now package logging software is an essential for campus mailrooms. Things change quickly and even time tested methods and procedures must be reexamined from time to time.
If you’re still logging packages by hand, schedule a demo of our package tracking system. Once you see how technology can help streamline your package logging process – and save you money! – we bet you’ll wonder how you managed to hold on to hand logging for so long.
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