The Strange Productivity of Doing Nothing
Here’s an odd thought. Sometimes the most productive thing you can pay someone to do is nothing.
I realise this sounds like the sort of management philosophy invented by someone in a white coat and a pipe.
But bear with me.
Because there’s something rather strange about the way we think about productivity.
We hate seeing expensive resources doing nothing.
So we keep them busy.
While trying to do the right thing for the customer.
Most organisations say customers matter.
There are posters. Values. Town halls. Employee experience programmes. Walk into some offices, and it’s difficult to look anywhere without being reminded.
Enormous screens display numbers in red, amber and green. NASA mission control (we care).
But then I see how people behave towards customers and wonder if something else is quietly giving us a different purpose, which makes people sad.
So we get table football (be happy).
I think there's a better way.
A wonderful lady I worked with had been around Ryanair in the early days. She told me Michael O’Leary once spent hours deciding where to put a snack machine.
Not because he had strong views on the optimum location of a Twix.
He wanted pilots to grab something without being knocked off course. Every unnecessary minute made it harder to achieve Ryanair's purpose: get people where they need to go, on time, and at a price that's good for the customer's long-term benefit.
In fact, he only measured turnaround time, time to deliver bags, and fuel burn.
Purpose was clear.
But it doesn’t always work like that.
Take social housing voids. Joe the joiner has nothing to do today. He’ll be needed tomorrow.
“We’ve paid for him. We can’t have him sitting around.”
Perfectly reasonable.
Joe isn’t so sure. “Send me over there today, and I’ll still be there tomorrow. Then this house will be waiting for me.”
But idle Joe looks expensive. So off he goes.
Excellent. Joe is now utilised.
Tomorrow the house needs Joe. Except Joe is halfway through fitting a door somewhere else. The house stops. Another trade waits. Another house gets started.
Soon there are half-finished houses everywhere.
And somewhere in accounts, a number turns green.
There’s a name for this: de facto purpose.
The purpose was to get somebody into a home. The de facto purpose became keeping Joe busy.
Nobody was stupid. That’s the interesting bit. Unused time costs money.
Therefore maximise utilisation.
Perfectly sensible.
Except a joiner doing nothing can sometimes be more productive than a joiner doing something.
Because Joe is busy.
But the house is empty.
Perhaps that’s the better test of purpose. Not what’s written on the wall. Not whether Joe was busy at 2.17pm on Tuesday.
But whether somebody can move into number 69.
Today's lesson is as simple as getting a Twix in the right place in the canteen.
Measure the result, not the resource.
Have you noticed anyone measuring the wrong thing?
