Three minute rule

Growing up, my mother would cook soft-boiled eggs for breakfast. In our house, to get a soft-boiled egg, it had to boil for three minutes. My mother didn't use an egg timer. Instead, she braided my hair. As a six-year old, my job was to have my hair brushed, and elastics and ribbons in hand so that as soon as the eggs went in the boiling water, my mother could braid my hair and tie bows at the end of each braid in three minutes.

Fast-forward to a past-life in retail sales. I got very good at keeping every phone call to under three-minutes. I could greet, question and book almost anyone in a three-minute phone call. One of my mentors, Ann Newbury, a Texas millionaire many times over, emphasized that when a call drags on beyond that, you are wasting booking time. You need to get off the phone and get on to the next call.

The three minute rule came up again today. It was the premise of a short article on UPS in Business 2.0 "The Three-Minute Huddle" Secret 20 in their Best-Kept Secrets of the World's Best Companies. At UPS, everyone starts the day with a lightning-fast, all-hands mandatory briefing. The key is, it can only take three minutes. It's how managers guard against slack. They cover company announcements, local information that could impact on-time delivery or customer complaints and concludes with a safety tip. The practice has proven to be so successful that many hourly office workers start each day with a three-minute huddle of their own.

When I talk to business leaders about planning time to plan, they love the concept of a brief meeting every day to keep everyone on the same page. In reality, this concise, focused briefing gets relegated to the Should List instead of the 6-Most Important Things List. Think of the different it would make if we all followed through for just 180 seconds each day.