Jim McGee had a great post on the Fast Forward blog, Balancing diligence and laziness. He begins with a reference to the work of General Erich Von Manstein (1887-1973) on the German Officer Corps. Erich mapped a 2 x 2 matrix with laziness/diligence on one side and smart/stupid on the other. He said the stupid lazy people can be ignored as they do no harm. It is the stupid diligent people that are the biggest threat to the organization. The smart diligent people become middle management and the smart lazy people become senior management. Jim adds to this, “…our Puritan/Calvinist heritage still dominates reward and evaluation systems. Regardless of the actual importance of thought and reflection to long-term organizational success, you are better off looking busy than looking like you are thinking.”
I have seen this happen in so many organizations. Where middle management that aspires to senior management will watch when the senior guys get to work and make sure they are there earlier to be seen looking busy. There was even one consulting firm that I partnered with that took this to an extreme. I will not name them but it was not one of my employers, only a partner. They saw that their goal was to instill a workaholic nature in their client’s employees. They would spend long hours doing planning sessions. They would be sure to arrive before the employees and leave afterwards. Often they dragged in the employees to their endless planning sessions.
Eventually, when they did not produce much besides detailed analysis and plans, their numbers would diminish and then they would get kicked out. The employees would be glad to see them go. They made us look good since the firm I was with at the time focused on having a good time, working as short hours as possible, but producing tangible results. That has been my work ethic.
Jim posed some useful questions at the end of his post.
What alternate terms than diligence and laziness could we use to better frame the issue?
How important is it to carve out times and places to engage in visible laziness within organizations?
Is this a problem that needs to be solved at the organizational level? For which types of organization?
What barriers to innovation, if any, does a bias toward diligence create?
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