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Chris Barrow taught me this a long time ago, but I've realised I use it almost every single week.

 

The people you work with, your colleagues and your team members are like the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts at the end of the checkout in Tesco.

 

Worth remembering here that I was a checkout operator at Tesco for years as a student, so I have some insight into this.

 

There are three types if you watch the guys that pack the bags at the end of the checkout.

 

1) A one bagger 

 

That's the person who opens one bag and packs it in and fills it and passes it to the side and opens another bag and usually not particularly quickly.

 

2) The two-bagger

 

That's the person who has two different bags to pack heavy stuff at the bottom of each bag and light stuff at the top. They can pack two bags at once and organise things.

 

3) That's the person who does dry things and fridge things and frozen things in different bags and can literally pack with both hands at once.

 

Everybody would love a business full of three baggers, but it doesn't work; they just kill each other. They fight each other for opportunities and status, so you need some of those but not all of them.

 

The two-baggers are the people that make the business run. They're the guys that are solid, get through stuff and enjoy what they're doing and are stimulated.

 

There's not a lot of place for one baggers after a certain period of time, so maybe it's worth thinking about who you've got in your organisation and what your ratio of ones, twos and threes are.

 

Maybe it's more important, though, to figure out what you are.