is176008892 largeIn the early days of Bethlehem Steel, it was a small, up-and-coming company, then one day young management consultant Ivy Lee, came by to speak with Charles Schwab.

Because of Lee’s visit, Andrew Carnegie, founder of Bethlehem Steel, paid Schwab a $1 million annual salary, the first man in U.S. history to be paid that amount. ($1 million then is about $14.5 million today)

During that visit, Ivy Lee proposed that he would be able help Schwab find better ways to do the things necessary for the company’s success.

Schwab informed Lee that they already knew how to make high quality steel; they knew what needed to be done… [quotesright]But they weren’t getting those things done.  [/quotesright]

“If you can show me how to do the things we should to be doing,” Schwab challenged, “we’ll pay you whatever you want.”

Lee was confident that he could do that in 20 minutes. He even invited Schwab to use the system and pay Lee whatever the steel company executive felt it was worth, if anything. Lee’s confidence impressed Schwab and he told Lee to proceed.

Lee had Schwab get a sheet of paper and asked him to, “Write down all the things that you need to do tomorrow.” Schwab did as instructed. “Now review the list and number the items in the order of their importance,” Lee continued. Schwab did that.

Lee then provided Schwab with the following instructions:

“First thing tomorrow morning, I want you to start working on the item one and stay with it until it is completed. Next, work on item two, and don’t go any further until that is completed, next start on item three, and so on.

“If you’re unable to complete everything on your list, no worries. At least you will have taken care of the most important high value things before getting distracted by items of lesser value,” Lee continued.

Lee told Schwab that if he was able to complete all the items on the list before the days end, just make a new list and start on that. If you have any items left at the end of the day, again just add those to the next day’s list.

“The secret is to do this daily; evaluate all the things you have to get done, establish priorities, rank ordering your tasks from most important to least and write them down. That is your plan of action and stick to it,” Lee said.

Lee recommended that Schwab do this every day, as well to have others in the company to leverage and use this system.

Lee invited Schwab to “test this system for as long as he liked, and then send me a check for whatever you think the idea is worth.”  (Schwab sent Lee a check for $25,000. That is approximately $360,500 today).

-by Coach Phil Gilkes

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