2 minute read
Business Operations
By Mike Leigh
Executive Summary:
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Have you ever noticed that the bigger a company gets, the more bloated it becomes?
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Do more with less
It doesn’t have to be this way. As more people are added, more projects are initiated, and more metrics are measured, the organization will usually slow down and accomplish less.
As a business grows, there is a tendency to solve problems and challenges by addition. A new system. New staff. More meetings. A bigger building. In a recent Wall Street Journal article by Robert Sutton, the author explains that many leaders are rewarded who add too much. Managers who grow and supervise larger teams and bureaucracies tend to get bigger salaries and fancier titles. Often, leaders think the key to success is to add new “stuff” when the opposite is true.
David Packard, a co-founder of Hewlett-Packard once said, “More businesses die from indigestion than starvation.” This is because leaders add too much and subtract too little.
Sutton writes, “when leaders are undisciplined about piling on staff, gizmos, software, meeting, rules, training and management fads, organizations become too complicated, their people get overwhelmed and exhausted, and their resources are spread so thin that all their work suffers.” I couldn’t agree more. Frequently, when I work with companies, I see too few people being pulled in too many directions and I must coach them on focusing on only the most important tasks or goals.
Recently I worked with a company that was running out of space and the owners asked me to help them with space utilization. They were strongly considering adding a new building or expanding their current one. Thankfully, I was quickly able to diagnose where they had too much “stuff” and put them on a path to reduce their floor space needs and put a building expansion on hold.
Organizations need to reward their leaders who can drive efficiency by eliminating wasteful activities and efforts. Which processes in your company could be simplified or eliminated? Which products and services should you stop providing?
By eliminating excessive “stuff”, companies can become more focused, their people will become less overwhelmed, and their leaders will be more successful.
