Tracking Busyness or Results?

Often times, I’ll ask organizational leaders a fairly common question: “How’s business?”  The most common answer? “We’re busy.”  It seems like a positive response and why not? It’s good to be busy, right?

The most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review features a cover story titled “The Busyness Trap.”  While there is much to be said for working hard, its authors note that activity in and of itself is not an effective measure of success.

While no one is advocating employees standing around with nothing to do, there is much to be said for rethinking workflow, processes, systems and people; how they are structured, organized and deployed in the direction of organizational success. The issue is systemic and impacts even the best performing organizations.

I recently met with the leadership team of one organization trying to understand why they struggled to get invoices out sooner. While interviewing members of the accounting department, one particular process (among several) was identified as redundant, time consuming, and unnecessary. When asked why these steps were being followed, the response of the manager was telling: “It fills my day.” So that’s the objective now, to fill someone’s day?

This challenge of “busyness” is not confined to one area or business activity. Consider the IT department. Ask the person in charge how things are going, and you will likely be told of a backlog and strained resources and people. Senior leaders are equally frustrated.

Working with the leadership team of a fast-growing company, we decided to take a fresh look at this enduring challenge. We created a grid as a way or prioritizing IT “tickets,” work requests from internal colleagues for technology projects. We identified a list of criteria, then prioritized these items with a focus on how they would impact the business. Three surfaced to the top of the list: investment cost, time required to complete the task, and the estimated dollar impact it would have on the business (in real, measurable cost savings and/or additional revenue).

Attempting to estimate the monetary impact on the business is not an exact science.  Nevertheless, it is a useful exercise that gets the team to focus on this key objective and can carry-over into decision making processes throughout the enterprise. And don’t underestimate the importance of having these discussions with the senior team. This alone will help unify the group around key business objectives and the things that matter most.

For more information including useful tools you can use to address “busyness” in your organization, contact me at joe@ajstrategy.com.