Manifest Inefficiency

I was going to write a great blog post about writing a great blog post, but when I did a quick Google search for a little kick-start to my writing, I stumbled onto a mentioning of Parkinson's Law. The gist of Parkinson's Law is "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".

This is absolutely true! I am a small business owner. I am the sole employee. I have no supervisor or boss. It's just me. If I give myself all day to get a project done, it will take me all day to do it. It doesn't matter if it was a one or two hour job. There's always something that will come along and make it take longer. Add to that, the so called 80/20 rule, where a person gets about 80% done with a job relatively quickly and spends all the extra time trying to perfect the last 20%, and whole day is consumed. I have a friend who is an excellent artist, and his 80% is better than the 100% of most others, yet it's hard for him to let go of that pursuit of perfection. A loose or distant deadline just exacerbates the issue.

Reading a little more about the origins of this adage shows that it actually came from the writings of Cyril Parkinson, and was describing how bureaucracies tend (always) to expand. Not only do they expand, but they expand themselves into uselessness and powerlessness.

This is not just a symptom of western government. Alessandro Natta, an Italian communist, complained about the growing bureaucracy in Italy, to which Mikhail Gorbachev reportedly replied "Parkinson's law works everywhere".

Take the example of a small council like a Cabinet. Perhaps the Cabinet begins with five or six advisers. Over time, a few more advisers are added until one reaches twenty or so. When the Cabinet is small, it can come to agreement, but there are enough members that a single person does not wield all power. As it grows, it loses the ability to agree, and thereby loses all relevance. Parkinson suggests that the point of manifest inefficiency is around 19 to 23 and that perhaps the optimal membership is 8.

In business, I've heard that if it takes more than one head to make a decision, you're already in trouble.