"Busy" Is A Four Letter Word

A friend on Twitter shared a link to a blog post entitled "The cult of busy". In it, blogger Scott Berkun talks about growing up somewhat in awe of busy people, and how he drew the natural inference that busy-ness implies importance. Since entering the work force himself, however, he's dramatically revised that assessment, and his post provides many reasons why.

What I couldn't help thinking about as I read over his commentary was the environment at the company where I was the Agile Manager from 2006 to 2008. As I touched on in various parts of the two Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan books, there were several different ways in which this "cult of busy" manifested itself there. Managers routinely allowed themselves to be booked into meetings all day long (often double- or even triple-booked, at times); developers were allocated to project plans at anywhere from 150 to 300% of their actual capacity, in order to produce fictional end dates that executives somewhere would find palatable in the short term; personnel would be moved frantically from one project, team or activity to another in the hope that such desperate measures would somehow speed things up (those who'd read The Mythical Man-Month apparently didn't comprehend its meaning). At the core of all those foolish endeavours, I think, was a cultural phenomenon that coloured every decision of that sort: the deeply-rooted belief that it was better to try, and fail, than not to try at all. While I think that's a noble philosophy, it's one that should only be embraced if:

• there's some reasonable chance of success;
• there's a widespread understanding that 'trying' is what counts, not succeeding; and
  
• there's no other alternative.

I think our company failed (and possibly continues to fail) on all three of those fronts. We had proved, over and over again, in small examples as well as large, that overloaded people produced very poor results. It didn't matter if it was the ineffective manager who didn't have time to actually groom his or her employees, the project manager who was running in sixteen directions at once and getting nowhere, or the developer whose attention was being time-sliced to bits... they all had the same problem, and their work suffered accordingly. Then, the recriminations would begin. "But you committed to getting this done!" would immediately come out of some mouth, in a disappointed whine like a child might give a parent, despite the fact that the work had originally been agreed to on a provisional, "best effort" basis. The other option, of course, would have been to commit to less - whatever seemed actually possible - and then bear down to deliver the very best example of that, in the time available. For management, this would have meant learning how to say "No" to their bosses, for example. For the employees, this would have required some backbone, as well, but also a heightened sense of professionalism: "I say what I can do, and then I do what I say."

Now that my life is considerably less busy, I'm amazed at how well things go. My Math book turned out even better than I'd imagined, and yet I got it done in less time than I'd expected. I've had great success with most of my Math students by taking a long view with them, rather than reacting to every little setback as if it were a crisis. There's much more on this topic to be found in that aforementioned Math book, by the way.

These days, I have lots more time in my day to do whatever I think needs to be done... and yet I find I have less time than ever for "busy" people. Those who can't stop and have a coherent conversation without whipping out their Blackberry or being distracted by a phone call just aren't worth the effort anymore, if you ask me.