On Spiralling Busywork

rawpixel.com

My ideal job, assuming I had to trade time for money, would be going to organisations and helping them to cut out busy work. Processes that are political rather than help results. Random thoughts from the top that send a ripple into a tidal wave as it makes its way down the organisation. The quick Excel sheet that turns into a monster model to bypass an idiosyncrasy of the system rather than fixing it. Throwing people at the problem rather than process or system. Meetings that are not focussed on creative high-level thinking, strategic planning or tactical execution (all of which are valuable) but instead are a talking shop where people try to do other people's jobs. Things that make people feel good rather than actually driving results.

Forecast and stock policy is a great example. The higher level the forecast, the more accurate it is usually. When something fails a customer order, every man and his dog wants a say on what the process should be. How could you not know that my customer needed this stock? We must change to individual forecasts and roll them up. What do you think happens then? Everyone includes a little bit of buffer and it multiplies up until the forecast is ridiculously over-egged. No chance of us failing orders anymore but now we need another warehouse that we have not costed into the sales price, so now we are not making any money.

This example can be seen in every function in every area of corporate life. The proliferation of meetings is the same. The CEO wants a numbers review every month, not an unreasonable request. So, the SE's need a pre-meeting every month. Each functional SE needs a pre-pre-meeting with their managers and they, in turn, need pre-pre-pre-meetings with their teams to know what is going on.

Meetings can be great, but only if you have the right inputs focussed on what you want to get out of it. Why does the CEO want to have a numbers review? Tell that to the people at the bottom actually doing the work and see what you get back without the managers in-between.  You might be surprised.

---