Turnaround Time

In manufacturing, turnaround time is the speediness of shifting from one line into another. For example, the complete canning line can be converted from pints to quart size within minutes; similarly, for pint bottles to quarts. I am, obviously, partial to the larger volumetric measures when it comes to chaffing liquids into my body after a long run ('My body is a sponge!' goes my mantra). Downtime is what we experience when we experience no work/productivity during the changeover period.

This evening, I ran 21km (against my better judgement). I suspected I picked up a bug from some of my students, or the girl sitting next to me on my flight back last Monday. She was coughing and sniffing away - so, she could have influenced me in a deleterious way - as evident tonight.

Nevertheless, after 11km I decided to do a faster turnaround time to test my legs after a week of no running. It was a decent effort, about 5 minutes a kilometre. Drinking, unhygienically, with my cupped hands at my designated water-points, mainly the public toilets situated at about 3km intervals, ate into my run time. By holding back on the first half of my run, I was somewhat fresh on my second loop.

Afterthoughts: I tend to go too hard on my first leg, when I could exercise a little patience. By going hard, I can drain my reserves and catch more time with a possible second or third wind. How often do you engage your patience when dealing with colleagues, customers and contractors?

During thinks: You can, intuitively, sense if you are not feeling well and beg off from pushing hard. Sometimes, you just feel flat or lethargic. In tonight's case, I experienced just that. In doing so, I actually went faster instead of slower. How can we apply turnaround time in a team setting? How do you accelerate their efforts in a time of crisis?