Friday, March 30, 2012

Are they making 'efficiencies' in your organisation?


'Do more with less'. 
'Rationalisation'. 
'Making efficiencies'. 
'Being more effective'. 
'Streamlined'. 
'More businesslike and professional'. 

Sound familiar?

This is the story in many many companies, organisations and services around the world. Certainly, in just about every organisation I step foot in at the moment I meet people who's work has 'streamlined' or 'rationalised'. The effect for most workers is that they have no 'spare' time. They are largely moving from one task to another, “back to back without the time,” as one employee told me this week “to even draw breath”. 

As ‘spare time’ is eased out of the working day in the name of efficiency so does the ability to stand back and see what is really happening, to take stock of what is working and what isn’t, to get creative and dream (yes dream) up new ideas and have new thoughts and find better ways of doing things. To notice which tasks are really a waste of time and innovate. The very things an organisation under pressure needs the most. Odd that.

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