Truth.
There will always be more work to do than is possible to accomplish by my team.
Think more. Whine less.
Earlier this year I penned some thoughts about thinking through resource contention, Do more with what you have!, because I was looking for better ways to address resource contention than to simply say more people are needed. Getting stuff done is as much a mindset as it is a collection of work output. I’ve learned that when I am overwhelmed with size of the backlog of tasks then the frequency of my output decreases.
In the book, ReWork, Fried and Hansson address the value of staying lean with less,
“I don’t have enough time/money/people/experience.” Stop whining. Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative. “
Do I believe that? The words do inspire me to look at my backlog through a different set of lenses. One thing I know is this. If I’m able to produce consistent output that adds value to the customer and mission of my team then conversations about the priority of the backlog are easier.
In the book Blue Ocean Strategy, Kim and Mauborgne say it this way,
“instead of getting more resources, tipping point leaders concentrate on multiplying the value of the resources they have.”
The Theory of Constraints management paradigm teaches us to first find the constraint within a process and then to exploit the constraint by shifting resources, managing work queues, and possibly adding capacity. With this lense, value is unlocked by first examining the underlying process instead of trying to add more people.
More or less?
As I sit writing this, I’m led to these conclusions:
More is contentment with less because having less allows me to get more done.
Less is obsession about more, because having more often leads to getting less done.
Onward and upward!