38. Project Sluts

A tendency to take on too much hurts the organization’s velocity and results in lowered net effectiveness. But the temptation can be irresistible. . . .

In this era of cost-cutting and staff reductions, there is an emerging consensus—at least among IT professionals—that companies aren’t building enough new software, thus missing opportunities for real strategic advantage. If you’re part of this consensus, consider for a moment the exact inverse of that idea: Maybe you’re building too much software.

There seems to be a twenty-first century imperative that everything has to be done yesterday. If speed matters so much, one obvious trade-off is to buy speed by reducing load. This plain, common-sense approach unfortunately flies in the face of an unstated but important political reality: Shedding anything risks offending someone, maybe someone with clout.

Suppose you get a work request from an upper manager, Duane. You know the team is already overloaded, but Duane has clout. He also has a booming voice. If Duane is powerful and loud enough, you may decide to cave.

“Oh, what the hell,” you sigh. “Sure, Duane, we’ll implement your feature.”

Let’s go back over that transaction: Your organization has accepted a bit more load than it can comfortably handle. You have done this to stay on the good side of a powerful person. Because the same limited resources now have to be spread over more work, the work on average gets done more slowly. You’ve essentially sacrificed speed to steer clear of Duane’s crosshairs. It gets worse. Duane is not the only powerful person in your company. In fact, anybody who’s able to initiate a request for new system work holds some power over you. In your effort to avoid criticism, you may feel compelled to say yes to this work. Each time you say yes, you cause all other work to slow down.

Accepting more work than your team can do well is an act of managerial cowardice. In order to avoid personal criticism, you create conditions in which your team cannot succeed. Ultimately, your team will suffer overwork and lowered esteem in the organization because you did not have the courage to say no in the first place.

What would you have to do to reverse this unfortunate cycle? Prioritize the work and do only as much as you can handle at maximum speed. Put lower-value work on hold until higher-value work is completed.

This may be difficult to implement. You’re delivering value faster, but you’re giving up clout. As you say no to powerful people, your effectiveness increases but your political power may drop. The underlying principle here is not comforting: You can get more essential work done faster, but only by foregoing some potential political power.

Politics is not the only reason organizations overload themselves. Individuals are similarly inclined to let themselves become over-burdened. They can’t say no. They’ve heard that less is more, but in their hearts they know that only more is more.

Taking on more than you can handle at maximum speed is a recipe for getting slow. You almost never see the quantity/speed tradeoff stated quite this bluntly—it’s downright unappealing. Its lack of appeal helps explain why so many organizations are slowed almost to a stop by the sheer quantity of work they’re trying to get done. If they paused to separate the wheat from the chaff, they would realize that what’s slowing them down is so much chaff.

If you’re a manager, allowing this pattern to persist (either by your actions or those of your subordinates) puts your project at substantial and unnecessary risk.