A senior manager said, “We give our resources everything they could need: technology, tools, even some training. Why are they so slow?”
I asked, “How many projects are they working on?”
“Each resource has at least two projects so they stay productive and efficient.”
These managers have created a resource efficiency culture, not a flow efficiency culture, as in the image above. Resource efficiency means we watch each person's effort.
In contrast, a flow efficiency culture watches the flow of the work. Everyone asks the question, “How can we move this piece to done, together?” (This question “scales” from a team to the managers.)
What does your culture value? Each person's busy-ness? That's resource efficiency.
Or does the culture value throughput, so people collaborate on the flow of the work?
No culture values “both.” Your culture values one or the other.
Culture Matters for Effective Value of People's Time and Throughput
I wrote the Modern Management Made Easy books and Manage Your Project Portfolio so managers could see the effect of a flow-based culture. (Okay, also all my other books.)
When managers explain their worries about flow efficiency they say they worry about:
- How to manage performance. (You don't have to. See If Managers Don't Give Performance Reviews, What Happens?)
- Accountability for the person's work. This changes to being accountable to a team for that team's work. (Back in the flow efficiency series)
- Will the team really increase their throughput and finish more work and more projects? Yes, because when people collaborate on fewer things, they reduce their cycle time. That reduces their WIP. You can expect more throughput because of Little's Law. When people work on fewer things, they finish faster. That finishing allows them to change or take on more work—after they finish.
Human beings are not resources you can move around like chess pieces. They are resourceful, creative people, who often want to do their best work.
Focus on creating a culture that values a person's and team's throughput, not their tasks or efforts. Use flow efficiency to reinforce a culture of collaboration and throughput.