by Jim McGee
April 21, 2007 at 2:35 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
I’ve been thinking about Andrew McAFee’s recent post about “The Pursuit of Busyness” and the concerns of his current MBA students about what they perceive as a conflict between Enterrpise 2.0 technologies and their perceived need to “appear busy” in order to advance within organizations.
Last year, I took a look at a related set of ideas that i thought might be worth introducing into this discussion now. In the context of Andrew’s thoughts, this might be construed as some initial thoughts on how to do thinking in a way that looks busy.
Some time back I came across the following quote in The 80/20 Principle : The Secret of Achieving More With Less by Richard Koch, which I’ve been pondering ever since for its implications for knowledge work and knowledge workers:
There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…Second, there are the hard- working, intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard- working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent, lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.
General Erich Von Manstein (1887-1973) on the German Officer Corps
You can also map this quote into the following matrix representation:
One implication certainly is that you want to keep the average IQ up in your organization (setting aside all the limits on accurately measuring or assessing something as complex as intelligence for the moment). My own theory is that it also suggests that you want to keep your organization relatively small to maintain some degree of control over that average IQ. You may also want to keep the distribution of IQ in your organization as tight as possible.
The laziness/diligence dimension is the more interesting of the two in the context of knowledge work organizations. Common organizational practice is biased in favor of diligence, while laziness doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Granted, the appearance of blogs such as Slacker Manager is a hopeful sign, as is the recent spate of activity and commentary around the importance of innovation and creative thinking for knowledge based organizations. But our Puritan/Calvinist heritage still dominates reward and evaluation systems. Regardless of the actual importance of thought and reflection to long-term organizational success, you are better off looking busy than looking like you are thinking. Even organizations that exist to promote reflective thought (e.g., universities, research institutes, think tanks) fall into the trap of encouraging diligence at the expense of reflection/laziness.
I don’t yet have a fully workable solution to the problem of carving out sufficient and appropriate time for thinking and reflection. More often than not, it gets relegated to plane-time, travel-time, and after-hours time; essentially bypassing the organizational problem. I’ve found that mind-mapping, either by hand on on the computer, is one form of thinking that can be done in public without triggering unwanted negative perceptions. Setting aside time to maintain some form of journal (whether in the form of a blog or more private diary) is another thinking/reflecting discipline that is both productive and not immediately threatening to the activity police.
Here are some questions I think are worth exploring in this context.
- What alternate terms than diligence and laziness could we use to better frame the issue?
- How important is it to carve out times and places to engage in visible laziness within organizations?
- Is this a problem that needs to be solved at the organizational level? For which types of organization?
- What barriers to innovation, if any, does a bias toward diligence create?
Any takers?
[McGee’s Musings: Balancing diligence and laziness]
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Jim
Great post. I remember partnering with another consulting compnay on several engagements that had the appear busy ethic to the extreme. I will not name them to protect the guilty but it was not one of my past employers. Anyway, they felt their mission was to instill a workaholic nature in their client’s employees. They would observe the work habits of their clients and be sure to arrive before they did and stay after they left. This did not work well with the rank and file since they seldom prodcued anything of value beyond planning detailed documents and their engagement numbers tended to go down over time unitl they were kicked out. Bill
[...] I’ve noticed a lot of talk on the blogs lately about the curse of busyness, of not being able to work the way that works best for you, of being in reactive mode and not having time to do some old-fashioned thinking. I’ve even seen posts about how to sneak in think time but still look busy, if the culture you’re in happens to value busyness above all. The most difficult thing to do is to set boundaries, to say no to all the meeting requests and invitations and crises-of-the-day, and set aside the space to do what you need to do. At least, this is proving very difficult for me to do at this time. [...]
[...] Jim McGee had a great post on the Fast Forward blog, Balancing diligence and laziness. He begins with a reference to the work of General Erich Von Manstein (1887-1973) on the German Officer Corps. Erich mapped a 2 x 2 matrix with laziness/diligence on one side and smart/stupid on the other. He said the stupid lazy people can be ignored as they do no harm. It is the stupid diligent people that are the biggest threat to the organization. The smart diligent people become middle management and the smart lazy people become senior management. Jim adds to this, “…our Puritan/Calvinist heritage still dominates reward and evaluation systems. Regardless of the actual importance of thought and reflection to long-term organizational success, you are better off looking busy than looking like you are thinking.”I have seen this happen in so many organizations. Where middle management that aspires to senior management will watch when the senior guys get to work and make sure they are there earlier to be seen looking busy. There was even one consulting firm that I partnered with that took this to an extreme. I will not name them but it was not one of my employers, only a partner. They saw that their goal was to instill a workaholic nature in their client’s employees. They would spend long hours doing planning sessions. They would be sure to arrive before the employees and leave afterwards. Often they dragged in the employees to their endless planning sessions. Eventually, when they did not produce much besides detailed analysis and plans, their numbers would diminish and then they would get kicked out. The employees would be glad to see them go. They made us look good since the firm I was with at the time focused on having a good time, working as short hours as possible, but producing tangible results. That has been my work ethic.Jim posed some useful questions at the end of his post.What alternate terms than diligence and laziness could we use to better frame the issue?How important is it to carve out times and places to engage in visible laziness within organizations?Is this a problem that needs to be solved at the organizational level? For which types of organization?What barriers to innovation, if any, does a bias toward diligence create? [...]
[...] Now in terms of Von Manstein’s matrix (see FASTForward), I’m definitely on the lazy line with ambitions to be thought as smart (who doesn’t?) So hard work isn’t something I necessarily go looking for if I can find a smart way of getting something done faster. And something that needs to be said clearly is that Zen is very hard work indeed. The other statement that made me a little uneasy was: “This notion of the minimal is hugely important within the teachings of zen, turning into the idea that you channel the energy, or features, that are interesting to you as a user.” [...]
[...] more opinions, look at Jim McGee and Carmen Coyote, amongst others. Trackback [...]
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