March 2025 | ISE Magazine 19
O
Don’t mistake
busy for productive
By Carl Kirpes
management
Only a couple of great decisions trump all others.
As ISEs, we are asked to optimize, improve and enhance
multiple facets of our companies, organizations and teams.
The magnitude of the areas in which our skills sets can add
value is vast.
Throughout my career, I have gotten involved in multiple
continuous improvement projects, organizational initiatives,
capital expenditures, product enhancements and company
restructures. In many cases, I have led these initiatives.
The list above is not all inclusive, and to say that only one
item from the list happens at a time would be false; often
multiple initiatives are happening currently across multiple
departments and facets of the organization.
In each moment, each feels like the most important thing
that can be worked on at the time. In retrospect, while many
of those initiatives were and have been important, most
were incremental in the results generated. What I have
witnessed great leaders do – a skill in which I aim to hone
myself – is identify which projects and initiatives will truly
generate outsized results. Rather than trying to improve,
enhance or grow everything, knowing that doing so will
lead to improvement, these leaders focus on the few things
that create meaningful impact.
Warren Buet, after leading Berkshire Hathaway for
almost 60 years, said in his 2022 shareholder letter, “Our
satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen
truly good decisions – that would be about one every
ve years.” Another executive recently shared a similar
sentiment, saying “Carl, there are only about three to four
key decisions we each make in a year that truly have a large
impact on the organization.”
I prefer to focus on the latter advice and identify three
to four yearly decisions that will have a meaningful impact.
As I hone the skill of rening opportunity down to the most
important decisions, I’ll aspire to reaching decisions that
have enough impact to generate results so substantive they
satisfy a once-every-ve-year cadence. For now, I’ll stick to
the three to four key decisions each year (and I will not shy
away from saying that even getting to that level of clarity is
dicult).
Let’s assume these key decisions occur on separate
days. What then to do with the other 360-plus days per
year? To answer this question, I’ll turn to a football analogy.
In college football, only 12 games are played in the
regular season (perhaps a couple more for conference
championships, bowl game or College Football Playos.
for those good enough to make it that far). Think of these
games like the key decisions that you look to make within
your organization; these are the moments that really matter.
The rest of the time is spent practicing, weightlifting,
studying lm, knowing the playbook, etc. –devoted to being
ready when game time (decision time) comes.
In an organization (as in football), there is a daily, weekly
and monthly cadence that keeps the organization (and the
team) moving forward. I am not suggesting to forego this
important cadence, but rather frame it in the reference of
the important decisions, projects and initiatives that will
come about so you can be ready when they do – so you
can be ready for game time.
In addition, this perspective provides a mental model
toward that cadence of daily, weekly and monthly work. Is
that work productive toward preparing you, the organization
and the team for those moments that will make a
dierence?
Don’t mistake busy for productive. Being able to identify
those key moments and frame the cadence of the actions
you take around those key moments, that is where you will
nd outsized impact and outsized success.
Carl Kirpes is president and managing partner at KT Pacer,
a professional engineer licensed in Iowa and a project
management professional. He is IISE’s former senior vice
president at large, industry, and serves on the board of the
Iowa State University Alumni Association. He can be reached
at cjkirpes@outlook.com.
Rather than trying to improve,
enhance or grow everything ...
these leaders focus on the
few things that create
meaningful impact.
