Cut your systems some slack
Deadlines work. They work because they focus the mind and create urgency. They work to get us to file our taxes or finish a project. They’re an external lever for the work we have to do.
On the other hand, pudding works too. You don’t need an external force to encourage you to eat pudding after you’ve finished all your vegetables. It’s something you get to do, not something you have to do.
You can build a work life around deadlines. You can procrastinate, pay the late fines and push through the last-minute emergencies because you need all of that in order to get to ‘have to’ mode. Or you can follow the path of the most productive and happiest people you know: by redefining the work you’ve chosen to do as something you get to do.
Something that can often feel a little less than ‘puddingy’ is the organisation and management of our operations. And the default – to be a tad reductive – is to stuff as much as possible into a working day under the misguided sense of productivity.
But let’s just pause and think about this approach. To take a simple non-industry analogy – if your delivery drivers have to do six deliveries a day, they’ll rush from the first moment. They’ll be super-efficient at easily measurable metrics. They’ll cut a few corners.
If they only have to make five deliveries, you can ask them to spend that ‘down’ time doing things your customers will actually remember. They can invest in less easily measurable metrics. Instead of cutting corners, they’ll embrace them.
Systems with some slack built in are more resilient. The few extra minutes of time aren’t wasted, the same way that a bike helmet isn’t wasted if you don’t have a crash today.
One thunderstorm can cripple the air traffic system for six major cities because each plane is stacked so efficiently that the ripple cascades, leading to failure and cancellations. In the old days, when efficiency was measured over a longer term, there was enough buffer to absorb a bump like that.
The mistake happens when we over-index on the easily measured short-term wins and forget to account for the costs of system failure.
Competitive environments push profit seekers to reduce slack and to play a short-term game. If your organisation hits the wall the market will survive because it has lots of other options. But that doesn’t mean you will survive, especially when softer metrics like client experience matter more than ever.
