Maximize the work not done
By: Daisy Cheng-Milano
Tags: Efficiency, Leadership, Agile, Insecurity

Agile as Mindset (part 2): Maximizing the work not done

One of the reasons why agile isn’t as easily adopted by traditional businesses is that it requires deep-rooted mindset changes that challenge the core of our own very human insecurities. In this article, I will hone in on one of the 12 Agile principles “Maximize the work not done” and analyze what it means and the psychological obstacles that stand in the way of doing exactly that.

In part one of this series, I have honed in on the mistake-shaming attitudes from our society that prevented many people from cultivating the growth mindset. Hopefully, by now, the growth mindset is in place so we can break through the next societally revered mindset that happens to hold us and our organizations back to extreme detriments. That mindset is the glorification of “busy” as a positive work ethic. One of the biggest mistakes we have is associating the number of working hours to work productivity. There are quite a handful of articles from various studies as well as articles written in the Harvard Business Review to debunk the idea that working longer hours or overtime means workers are more productive. For example, in the article by Sarah Green Carmichael titled “The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies,” she has delineated various health-related issues associated with working long hours and that is corroborated by yet another HBR article by Meredith Fineman titled “Please Stop Complaining About How Busy You Are” where she expanded on the mental health issues employees suffered from that faulty mindset as well.

What does this have to do with Agile?

Agile principles understand human resources to be extremely valuable; thus, it heavily favors communication and human relationships and place processes and tools as secondary to human interactions and relationships. It acknowledges human resources as the basis for all value generating work that ultimately creates profitability for businesses. More importantly, it values “value”. This means it’s important to examine not the number of work hours put in by employees but the value generation of those work hours by those employees. If the employees are working overtime, it usually means there are inefficiencies in the process or the system itself. If no one in the organization has the time or capacity to evaluate where the inefficiencies stem from and ways to improve upon it, this holds the whole organization back from any forward moving momentum which gives your business competitors a clear advantage they need to make your organization obsolete. Referring to my previous article’s reference of van Eijnatten’s work on the Chaordic system, it would categorize your inefficient organization as perpetually in the state of “Fatal Chaos” and if it doesn’t improve or evolve, it will die from irrelevance. Any corporate culture that glorifies busy (as opposed to only a sometimes necessary evil) means it values the sustaining of inefficiencies in the system that leads to stagnation and ultimately the cessation of part of and eventually the whole organization.

Where to go from here?

First, work on becoming aware of your current work environment and, more importantly, your own physical/emotional state. If you feel stressed out, recognize and acknowledge that then figure out where the stress is coming from — is it from the people or the process? If it’s from the process, then deploy Six Sigma’s 5 Whys of Root Cause Analysis to pinpoint where exactly the process/system is failing or need improvement (this part can most certainly be, and for the most part should be, done as a team.) Then brainstorm on solutions to improve the process to ultimately eliminate the chronic stressor(s). If the solution is “more working hours” by employees, then ask why and what value will be generated by the added work hours and whether or not it’s moving the whole system towards efficiency or is it sustaining the defects and encouraging inefficiencies or worst yet, creating inefficiencies along the way? Another way of looking at this is to consciously ask yourself when presented with a task, “Is what I’m going to do a band-aid solution or does it fix root cause issues?” and “How can I make this process easier and less time-consuming; thus, maximizing the human resources of my team to do other value generating work?”

Digging deep

The above analysis and solution implementation part is actually the easier part but the psychological roadblock many of us have is a harder problem to solve. So, here is some real talk for those real human issues: fear and insecurities. Currently, with automation and robotic A.I.s moving us into what the industry is calling the forthcoming of the Fifth Industrial Revolution, one of the more blatant human insecurities are out there for all to see when headlines are plastered with “Robots are taking our jobs” or “Programmers are coding themselves out of their own jobs.” This is where people with a fixed mindset will understandably get stuck in fear making them wanting to hold tighter to their current routines for the sake of the sense of security they think it provides and those with the growth mindset will at the very least understand the concepts of the “Luddite Fallacy”; thus, won’t allow fear to stifle their own growth potentials. Luddites, for those who don’t know, were textile workers of yesteryear who fought really hard against textile machines that would have and did replace their manual labor jobs. They are the ones who could never in their wildest dreams envision what a cell phone is let alone IoTs and A.I.s and the jobs those sectors have created. I understand that is of no comfort to anyone who possesses those very real fears right now and shaming those fears will only make those fears stronger, so don’t fight it and don’t feel ashamed. It’s very human. Acknowledge it’s there and strategize the best way forward. Fighting against a massive current has never worked and as you can see, the auto industry is looking onward to self-driving cars and not backward to horse and buggies no matter how hard people fought automation there too. Most importantly, develop the self-confidence to know that you can absolutely be an innovative problem solver. You have that potential and honing skills and gathering proper knowledge-based tools are one of those incidences where working long hours can be justified because it helps move you forward.

You shouldn’t need to go it alone and management can/should help

Sascha Eder’s article from Forbes titled “Should You Let Your Employees Automate Themselves?” provided a great infrastructure on how the business organization can build a culture that promotes innovative thinking and value building. According to Eder, “In order to do this successfully, however, we’ve had to implement cultural and structural elements to truly reward employees who automate themselves and to get the entire company excited about high-level thinking over rote tasks.” More importantly, Eder suggested that companies can help ease employees’ insecurities by “creating a clear path to promotion and including job title distribution as part of the company roadmap/vision. This will motivate employees to work toward titles/salaries that reflect the intelligence and creativity it takes to maximize efficiency.”

Bringing it home

Maximize the work not done — it’s one of those very simple and logical ideas that makes sense right off the bat but without deep scrutiny of all the obstacles that may stand in our way of achieving that very simple idea, it’s very difficult to bridge concept to execution. This piece is in no way all encompassing of all the solutions to all the obstacles, but I hope it inspires you, the readers, to uncover and remove obstacles as you go along instead of giving up on agile because “it doesn’t work” for you or your organization.

As always, be flexible, be agile, innovate, lead the pack, change the world one value building move at a time.

References

Carmichael, S. (2015). The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies [web article]. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies

Eders, S. (2018). Should You Let Your Employees Automate Themselves? [web article]. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/12/27/should-you-let-your-employees-automate-themselves/#326bf51d153f

Fineman, M. (2013). Please Stop Complaining About How Busy You Are [web article]. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2013/09/please-stop-complaining-about

Further Reading

Madhavi, L. (2015). The Art of Maximizing Work Not Done [web article], Agile Connection. Retrieved from https://www.agileconnection.com/article/art-maximizing-work-not-done