Picture a Thursday when the office has a good talk. Winter prep. Who is still short a driver. Which accounts always wait until the cold is already in the house. Everybody nods. Friday morning the board looks the same. Same trucks. Same phone. The note that said you would get to it is still on the wall.
Taking the advice in feels like the work. The yard does not move until one thing in it is different, and a dispatcher can point at that thing on Friday without a speech.
Start with the phone. Your driver is in a driveway with the hose out. The office is already on a call. Another customer wants a will-call in before the weather turns. Let the customer who already knows what he needs place the order without waiting on a person at the desk. Custom Fuel App takes that order under your name. If you keep taking orders by phone, give the desk a clear way to record them and a cutoff time you actually keep.
Keep a pad by the phone. Monday, one line: the change you mean to make. Name the person who owns it, and name the day you will look. Friday, if you cannot point to that change in the yard, you do not write a second line. A second line on top of a blank one is how a notebook gets thick and a company stays where it was.
h/t Codie Sanchez, Contrarian Thinking, “How to create in the age of consumption,” October 1, 2026. Retold in our words.