From Idioms to Education

Idiom #11

“Cutting Corners”

“Been there and done that”.  I am sure you have too.  For me though, most times when I take this approach it comes back to haunt me.

“Cutting corners” may seem expedient and prudent but the practice rarely, if ever, allows you to produce the results that you are capable of producing.

“Cutting corners” significantly impacts the quality of your product.  When you cut corners, I predict that you will miss something.  When someone else examines your work, you will find a column of numbers added incorrectly of a typographical error that will cause you embarrassment.

I will share with you several anecdotes from my past where I will prove my point.   I recall doing a presentation with an auditorium filled with over 300 attendees where I was very proud of my content and how the presentation was going.  I spent a great deal of time in preparation.  In the middle of the presentation, I was orally reviewing a slide and I noticed a very obvious typo on the slide.  How did I miss this?  For me, it ruined my entire presentation.  I cut corners!

Another example is when I preparing the school budget for presentation to the Board of Education and in the meeting the board president pointed out a $600,000 error.  Fortunately, the error was in our favor.  I wanted to die.  I wanted to crawl under the table.  We were all able to laugh at this later, but it nevertheless was a negative reflection on me.  Why did this occur?  I cut corners.

Finally, I caution all leaders to double and triple check memos and e mail that go out to staff.  The smallest grammatical error or typo usually was sent back to me, of course anonymously, with my error encircled in red.  Once again, I cut corners.

In this case, I cut corners because I was probably upset by something and my emotions got the better of me.  I sent the note out before a non-emotional reading took place.

In the other cases I did not proof my work well enough or have someone else proof it for me.  I learned something once from a paraprofessional when I asked her to proofread something for me.  I watched her work and she read the paper backwards.  When I asked why she did this, she explained to me that this forced her to read the words regardless of the content.  It made sense because many times our eyes will read what we think it should say rather than what is written.

We will rationalize these mistakes because we will argue that we are over worked and we do not have enough hours in the day to accomplish all of our tasks.  This is a poor excuse because with proper planning, organization and by paying attention to the details we could get the job done.

Why do you cut corners?  Are you overwhelmed?  Disorganized? Careless? Lazy?  There is no good answer to this question.  It is all under your control.