Bread Knowledge
I am confident that my colleagues will take what we have built and the lessons we have learned to build better systems and make more sound decisions that will make the business grow bigger and stronger than we ever could have imagined when we started.
As I reflect on my last three years helping to build The Women’s Bakery operations in Rwanda, I have been thinking about the knowledge I have gained and the lessons I have learned.
I know that this knowledge will only be useful to the business if I can successfully transfer it to my colleagues As a result, I have begun to focus on training. My days are now filled with one-hour blocks to teach a variety of topics such as: how to process employee income and social security taxes, how to build pivot tables in excel, how to create a company policy, how to create employee contracts, and how to purchase and enroll employees in health insurance. I have always thought of myself as a horrible teacher. So, this process is teaching me yet another lesson – how to become a better teacher.
We have to acknowledge that a single task that may take us one hour might take five hours of training and countless follow-up questions before someone else may be able to master it. When we budget our time, we often fail to budget the appropriate amount of time it takes to actually train and pass off a single task. But, we have to. We have to invest in training our team members, especially in times of transition to ensure that operations can continue smoothly.
I am excited to pass on the knowledge I have of our operations to my colleagues and I am excited for the business growth that will follow.
I am confident that my colleagues will take what we have built and the lessons we have learned to build better systems and make more sound decisions that will make the business grow bigger and stronger than we ever could have imagined when we started.
This is bread knowledge; this is #breadpower.
