5 Little Lies about Productivity in the Workplace

Nowadays, we are spending more and more time working at all hours of the day and night. Worst yet, we talk ourselves into believing that things will get better soon.

We Are Overworked and We Continue to Tell Ourselves That Things Will Get Better Soon but They Do Not
Living in a culture that rewards being busy over doing productive and/or meaningful things presents yet another challenge.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

Over time we begin to justify why working so many hours with no vacations or breaks and doing things that are clearly detrimental to our mental and/or physical health is just who we are.
And to help us with this deception, we tell ourselves lies that make perfect sense but seldom turn out to deliver the expected benefits. Here are 5 examples:

1. Complete Projects

We tell ourselves that the reason we are working so many hours is an aberration and that our schedules and workload will get back to normal once this or that project is finished.

2. Hire More People

We also tell ourselves that our workload will get better when we finally hire the new team members we have requested so we can start delegating and getting things off our plates.

3. Eliminate or Reengineer

Looking at business processes that can be reengineered so we can shorten or streamline the amount of work required from us is also a thing we do.

4. Outsource

Sometimes Outsorucing Things Creates More Work Internally

Sometimes we even look at getting rid of things that are too hard or not strategic enough by completely outsourcing them in a way that eliminates the functions or processes completely.

5. Hire Consultants

And, when it all else fails, hire the consultants to do the work. Getting consultants and/or contractors on a temporary basis to take care of the extra work is supposed to help us get back to working normal hours.

Realities We Ignore

All the potential solutions (i.e., lies) listed above make perfect sense on the surface. So why is it that we continue to work the same amount or hours regardless of new technologies, new people, or redesigned processes? 
Is it just a personality issue? Are we just built to drive ourselves to be super busy regardless of what we are doing? Is it a culture issue? All of these issues are certainly part of the explanation.
However, the biggest reason why these potential solutions seldom deliver the reduced workload we seek, is that they usually just generate more work.
New employees, contractors, or consultants need to be trained, outsourcing initiatives require vendor evaluations and lengthy conversion projects, and reengineered processes require change management.

The Solution

Assuming that we have the right resources available, and that we are not workaholics, then the real answer to get our workload down to manageable levels lies in our ability to efficiently delegate and move towards a management-by-exception model.
This is only possible once we create a true culture of accountability in the workplace that allows us to redirect our attention away from supervising, verifying, rechecking, or redoing things and more into value added and strategic activities.
CommandHound Enables Management-By-Exception
In addition, using a tool like CommandHound that has been built from the ground up to drive accountability and to manage-by-exception will only help make this transition easier.

Next Steps

Would you like to learn more about how CommandHound can help you significantly reduce your workload by driving accountability in the workplace?