Leading Well Through Service
When you think about good leaders, who comes to mind? Are they tyrants or servants? What are their defining characteristics?
Good Leaders Solve Problems
Often the measure of a leader is his or her ability to accomplish goals and solve problems. If you are reading this, you may be searching for answers to a problem in your organization. Maybe inefficiency or a strained budget are challenges you face. Where there are problems there are opportunities. Opportunities to overcome and make things better.
Good Leaders at Any Level
You don’t need to be a department director to be a leader because leadership is not just about telling people what to do. A leader can also lead ideologically. For example, one could be recognized as the person with good ideas or the one who challenges conventional thinking with the goal of getting the best results for taxpayers. You might be the one to lead your department to better outcomes. Just because it is difficult does not mean it can’t or shouldn’t be done.
Good Leaders Inspire
Beyond pragmatic problem-solving abilities, it also matters how a leader leads. Ideally, a leader is one who inspires those around them to take action toward the common cause. How much better is it when folks around you are working with you rather than against you? That is where inspiration comes in.
If you or someone in your organization is struggling with a health inspection process that includes double-entering or wasting time, it might be up to you to identify a solution and then demonstrate how getting there is the right thing to do. This may mean collecting data and showing return on investment calculations. You will become the champion of the cause.
In the End, Reward
End the end, there will be reward. Sure, the practical needs will be met and efficiency will prevail, but the best part will be the feeling you get when recognized by your peers. You solved this problem. You led well.
Back to Work, Back to Joy
When you think about the work you do you probably focus on the defining qualities of it, the things that make it different from other jobs. If you are a firefighter, you may think about rescuing people and putting out fires. But you also spend a lot of time taking care of equipment, training and just being ready. If you have a lawn service there is the mowing but you also spend time invoicing. Most jobs are like this — including environmental health inspections. In this case, the inspection itself is the core part of the job but there is often a lot of paperwork and extra work that comes with it.
But is this the way it should be? Is all the extra (paper) work what we really want to spend our time doing? Probably not. The answer is process and smart software.
The Power of Process
The power of a good process cannot be underestimated. When something has been done enough times, a process develops. When things don’t work, they are removed or modified until they work better. This is where we get best practices. The presence of a good process means we don’t have to think about what to do each time, we just do it. Forms for health inspections are process made tangible. They clearly define the requirements and make sure nothing is missed. You, the inspector, are left to perform keen observation and analysis.
Put the Computers to Work
The whole promise of computing has been to do the monotonous work that humans can’t do as well. If you are filling out a paper form, returning to the office and then scanning and reentering into a different system, you’re doing it wrong. But you probably already knew that which is why you’re reading this.
When smart software helps us do our work, it takes the extra work off our shoulders and lightens the load. We as humans are then left to focus on the human parts of the job like observing, interaction with people and the environment and then communicating findings in understandable ways.
Bring the Joy
The great benefit of reducing the administrative work is that it brings us back to the reasons we started the work in the first place. It keeps the work interesting. It is the work that is closest to helping and serving people. Together, let’s get back to doing the real work and do away with the monotony.
What it Means to Serve
A term that gets thrown around frequently in the business world is customer service. It seems to have become more of a department name or maybe even a way to describe helpfulness. But what about that second word, service. What does it really mean to serve someone?
It Starts with Humility
To serve another person requires one to be thinking of another’s needs — needs that may not even be recognized by those we serve. If we don’t serve with humility it’s not going to feel much like service to those who receive it. It might become quite the opposite. But even if their needs are met and problems are solved, there is a higher standard to be met. What if our service made those we serve feel appreciated and cared for? The irony is that the more we serve others in genuine humility, the more fulfilled we become. It’s a win-win situation.
A Thankless Job
Sometimes the work we do is under appreciated by others. True service means we continue in service even when others don’t notice or don’t seem to care. But this doesn’t mean the work is unimportant. There are jobs that would start to be noticed in their absence. If health inspections didn’t happen, the public would start to notice. We do the job because it is the right thing to do. It betters our communities; it keeps the public safe.
Knowing People
When one gets really good at serving others, he or she starts to anticipate needs or wants. To do this means one starts to really know a person. How good does it make you feel when you feel like another person “gets you”? Well, that is a pretty good measure of being served in humility and may it be a goal of anyone wishing to serve well. Figure out what someone wants and needs before they even know it themselves.
Take Action
The thing about service is that it is more than just a way of thinking, it is action. For it to be real, it has to be seen and felt by those who receive it. Sure, keeping it top of mind is part of serving well but it takes discipline to make it happen in tangible ways.
An Honorable Job
The job of a food establishment health inspector probably goes unnoticed by most of the public. The job itself may be invisible but the outcomes certainly are not. This is just the understated, humble work that makes for the highest form of service. Thank you for keeping us safe.
Why Health Inspection Software is Best as a Service
Imagine what it would be like if every time you needed to turn on a light switch, you had to turn on your personal power plant. Or refuel the generator. Or what would happen when your personal power plant breaks down. Of course this is not what it’s like at all. You simply flip the switch and the power flows effortlessly and without a thought of what it takes to make it happen.
This is the power of public utilities and it is the same reason software as a service is such a good idea. Below are three major benefits of a software provided as a service.
It’s Always There When You Need It
When health inspection software is provided as a service, it is simply a matter of you opening your web browser, logging in and getting to work. You don’t, and shouldn’t, have to think about what it takes to make the service available to you. That is the job of the providers. Just like electricity, it just works. And from anywhere. You don’t have to worry about whether or not the software is installed on your particular device. You can move from one device to another and the service is ever-present. One login, any location.
You Benefit from Service Improvements
When new features are added and the service is otherwise improved, you benefit. It is the service provider that is focused on making sure the service is always available and that it gets better over time. The alternative would be that the software was installed locally and that would be very difficult to maintain and improve. It would be stagnant and unchanging.
In contrast, Inspector A is a dynamic service that is constantly receiving updates and improvements to make your job easier. When improvement ideas come to us, we evaluate the usefulness and ways that the service would be affected. When ideas become features of the system, every customer gets to share in the improvements.
Cost are Shared
Since the service is shared by customers, the cost is also shared. Just like it would be very expensive to provide your electricity, it would also be very expensive to build and maintain your own software service. Instead, the service can be offered at a fee that scales from small to large organizations and budgets. It is a way for small and medium organizations to benefit from the systems normally used by big organizations.
It Should Just “Go Away”
Like a utility, a software service should be something that you don’t really have to think about. It should support you as a useful tool that helps you do your job better and more efficiently.
Inspector A was built to be just such a service. A simple and helpful tool to make your work easier.
Health Inspections Made Easier with the Right Tool
Do you remember what it was like when you were first learning to drive? It might have been a little dangerous but certainly it was challenging. Eventually you got better at it until eventually it became second nature. One of the reasons new drivers are more dangerous is because the “tool” of driving, the automobile, feels foreign. Tools make all the difference in being able to work well.
When you walk into an establishment to perform a health inspection, you want any tools you use to enable you to focus on the job of observing, analyzing and communicating. If you’re having to wrangle a difficult tool, that becomes a distraction that keeps you from doing your best work and serving your community.
A Good Tool is Humble
A good tool performs its role effectively and quietly in the background. It makes your job seem effortless — at least a part of it. No one is saying you have an easy job but if we can make the entry and reporting of information effortless then that lets you focus your attention on the hard stuff like food safety and communicating with people.
A good tool should also save you time. When it does, you have more room for all the important parts of the job. What if you had more time to catch up with restaurant staff? What if you had time to build better relationships? Could that lead to increased food safety?
Boiling it Down
This is really about getting the job down to its essence. When you boil it down, you're left with skilled observation and reporting. If we can remove the distractions we can do better work. Why should we enter information in the field and then again at the office? Why waste time looking for previous inspections when it should be a few taps of the screen away?
We built Inspector A to make food establishment health inspections intuitive and less time consuming. If we make data entry and reporting streamlined and effortless, then we’ve succeeded. We believe in the power of simplicity and how important it is to make health inspection software really easy to use.