Duplication - The Evil within the organisations

This time, the thought is about an issue which is present across organizations and if addressed rightly will result in significant increase in the productivity. It’s about eliminating Duplication that exists in the nooks and corners of our work life.

What is the most important problem that persists in all our lives? After a lot of meetings with various colleagues and industry veterans, the answer is singled out as “Time”! There is always so much to do that we are just not able to find out time for ourselves to venture into newer projects and processes in our work. When we take a close look as to where the time is going, we find that everyone is doing everything and this is where all the time is going. Seems like a silly thing to hear, but actually it is not!

There are different departments / people in an organization to perform different roles. However, over a period of time, depending on various factors like lack of trust, ambiguity in role, interest area, impatience and ego issues, we start venturing into every other department. Sample some of these thoughts. “Last time there was an error in  the Calculation by ABC team, let me do it myself this time and see if it is correct”, “Am I supposed to do this? Maybe I’ll get shouted at if I ask, Why not do it?”, “It’s exciting to do XYZ work, this time I’ll also get fully involved in the same”, “PQR Team takes a lot of time to update us on these issues, we’ll follow up ourselves”  becomes the initial point of starting to get into the works of neighbor departments. Slowly, it becomes a habit and then your “unstated” KRA. What seemed to be a proactive behavior, actually resulted in so many people doing the same work twice. Worse, if three departments don’t trust each other for the same work!

It is much  more important to understand how this problem would exist in a large organizations. As the number of layers increase, so do the chances of spreading “Duplication”. Between the different offices – Head Office, Branch Office and Area Offices, there’d be a number of activities that would be duplicated only for the simple reason of improper communication. Similarly, in the same office, the chances of duplication among various departments are quite high. It is also possible that Duplication exists within the same team where the junior person does some work and Boss cross verifies it. There is just so much of overlap all over! I have always fancied what all milestones can be achieved if all this time was spent in putting extra efforts in your work and working out on newer projects for your team.

A lot of times, we encourage Duplication to be the “check and balance’ in the system. To a certain extent, it could be right. But when it starts getting in excess of being only ”Checks and Balance”, that is where the issues arise. Also, when the “Checks and balances” start happening more often than not, that’s where bureaucracy steps in. Nobody trusts nobody else and everyone is busy pulling each other down to show how they are correct and the other person is a fool! Egos build up and all the time is spent in “proving” yourself rather than working your way up! A lot of times, this “Check and Balance” also results in people taking their work casually – knowing that the check exists and they’ll be corrected wherever they are wrong. This, inculcates, Duplication in the organization’s DNA. Sometimes, it also backfires. So,” if you have proved me wrong once, I will prove you wrong twice”, and the story continues…

Did you just realize the amount of imbalance that a seemingly simple thing like “Duplication” can cause?

To address this issue, Just a few points that I think will be helpful:

è At the onset we will have to believe that all people work for the benefit of organization. Nobody has any personal problems with anyone and human errors are inevitable. So, Trust! Do not make cross checking a habit in your work life.

è If there is any problem in sorting out who’s responsibility it is – Talk it out, There’ll be nobody who’ll want to do the work for the heck of it.

è If some of other department’s work is in your interest area – Assist, not Interfere. It’s always good to have an outsider’s point of view in any function.

è Last, but not the least, encourage “Samvaad”, rather than “Vivaad”. Blaming anyone will only result in backfire. Give suggestions, not directives. Click to read my blog on this topic!

Wonder if I am exaggerating on the evils of duplication. Ego, bureaucracy, insecurity and many others? For most of us, it is only about productivity. If you have been provoked, do ACT! ACT NOW!

PS: You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

Do you spend time with yourself?

This article is an attempt to address one of our usual work issues, TIME! However, here I am taking a different approach of looking at the issue and addressing the same.

Rohit comes to office every morning checks his mailbox and quickly makes notes of the work to be delegated. He then runs to the team and asks them who’s busy with what, selects the right candidates for handling today’s work and tells them how to do it. On enquiring the status on previous tasks, the team updates him and tells him the problems they faced with them. He then makes solves the problem himself and therefore helping them understand the way it should be done. He also double checks the work done by the team yesterday and shows them the correct method to do whatever was incorrect. In the meanwhile, his Boss calls him for an urgent work. He runs, takes it down and also updates Boss with the previous tasks’ status. Boss suggests some changes. Rohit, again, runs back to the team and tells them about the new task and updates them about changes in the old one. Its 2.00 pm and it’s time for a meeting and everyone rushes for that. Rohit is relatively unprepared as he was busy the whole morning. After the meeting, Boss calls him again and asks him – “Why are you always so unprepared?”

Rohit, undoubtedly, is a hard working person. The problem that he has is that he believes in doing everything himself. What would’ve happened if he delegated tasks to his team and asked them to turn up in case they had any doubt? Couldn’t he have sent the team back every time they came with a mistake in the file, instead of trying to solve everything himself? Could he have also allocated half an hour per day for his Boss to update him with the status and take fresh downloads, instead of running to him every time a new task emerged? That would’ve helped him spend so much time with himself!  Spending time with himself would have helped him organize himself better, prepare himself for the meeting and plan for the times to come. Once this cycle started, everything would set itself in place.

Typically, this is what happens with all of us. Each working day involves Reviewing Mails, New Task Delegation and follow up of Old tasks with teams, Receiving and Updating Status of Tasks to Boss, Coordination with other Teams, Attending Regular and Ad Hoc Meetings. In the quest of doing everything ourselves, we tend to lose on the most important activity required for every working day – “Spending Time with ourselves”!  Either we spend too much time with our Bosses or our teams. Spending time with oneself is hardly considered in the never ending agenda for the day. Many times, it is considered “unproductive” to spend time with oneself and this is easily deprioritized when it comes to “taking care” of the teams and “being obedient” to the Boss. One big demerit of such close supervision is the building “dependability” of the teams on you, which hampers growth – both of your team and yourself. The same thing is true in the reverse manner, if you are spending too much time with your boss. The team becomes too dependent on you to grow, and you become too engrossed in day today affairs to look forward.

Every day is an investment. Just like we invest money to build more money for us, we need to invest our time in such a manner that we get the profit of some extra time every day. For that, we first need to identify where is our time going currently? Making our teams responsible and trusting them enough with the routine tasks is one key way. If you think the problem is with your Boss calling you too often, talk your problem out. Like I’ve previously said, if you’ll really want to spend time with yourself, you will definitely find a way to do that. In that sense, it depends on you! But it’s you who needs to identify where you want to head to. Spending time with yourself could also mean reading up articles to improve your own learning and therefore the organisational learning.

One management tip I completely believe in, is spending at least first and last 20 minutes of your day with yourself. In the first 20 minutes, we need to plan our day, prioritize things, and set yourself ready for the day. The last 20 minutes should be spent in reviewing the progress of the day – Was it according to how you had planned? What did you do today that you will not do again?

Would be nice to know if this article impacted your way of working in any way?

PS: You can also reach out to me at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.