Cutting Whole Weeks
My first job out of college was an internship for video editing, and we had this convoluted process for editing a 30-60 second video so you could only do two a week. The major bottlenecks were getting approval on the graphics and exporting. We had a backlog of footage because they would have the talent shoot 30 segments at a time.
I spent a day getting all of the graphics done and approved at the same time, and then a day editing the actual videos. Instead of taking up office time sitting there watching something export, I let it go overnight for all the graphics, dropped them on all the footage the next morning, and set the final videos to export.
I let my manager know I’d be an hour late but have a few more done. I come back from lunch to the owner throwing a temper tantrum because it wasn’t completed before lunch, and he was chewing my manager out. I quickly stepped in and said, “the first one was probably done, but I’ll also have the next 2 months of videos done for you by the end of the day.”
My manager immediately adopted that process for the whole team, and I got hired at the earliest opportunity the owner could find.