Why Not “Do Less With Less?”

by Jon Lloyd

Have you considered doing less with… well, less?

Seems like the phrase of the moment is "do more with less." Even the latest marketing email from Harvard Business has all the answers for you–a collection of articles for a measly $89, what a deal!

In today's challenging business climate, managers are under pressure to produce better results with the same or fewer resources than before. Maximum productivity is now absolutely critical at both the personal and organizational levels.

I agree that many organizations are looking to do more with less. There are less people and there is more work right? Um, maybe.

Is there more work? Probably. Given the nature of mergers and acquisitions, systems implementations such as LMSs and web conferencing systems to save money and train more people virtually, and a lot of companies that frankly still have their processes stuck in first gear, or maybe just stuck because that's the way it's always been done, well, there is certainly a lot to tackle.

Are there less people? Yes. No offense. If you haven't been touched personally in your family, or close friends, you know someone who knows someone that has been affected by the current economic crisis. No doubt. I can heartily empathize with you here.

I even noticed a recent article about "singletasking." Do you ever remember doing that? Hmmm, it's been awhile. However, I would not hesitate to see this as a new 'trend' that suddenly hits the cover of Newsweek.

The concept of doing "less with less" has to do with the fact that many organizations are stuck with old school processes and reasons for doing 'it'. Wayne (Hodgins) uses the term 'perfecting the irrelevant'. Here are some suggestions for doing less with less:

1. Examine how your outputs and deliverables map to the company's goals and business needs. Decide what has to be done, and what is legacy – you're doing it because that's the way it's been done for.
2. Determine how your processes for taking the remaining items to market can be optimized for scale. If you aren't looking at this now, you should. Whatever the business goals your company has, obviously growth is going to be one of them, and you need to build scalable processes and methodologies to scale to support it.
3. Innovate. Take your team offsite. (Hey, McDonald's has free wifi. Your public library probably has a quiet workroom, also with wifi, that you might be able to use.) Determine what deliverables that you HAVE to produce can be done in a completely different way. There are plenty of sites and books about brainstorming, and using mindmapping tools are a great help.