About Dan Markovitz
Dan Markovitz is the founder and president of TimeBack Management. Prior to founding his own firm, Mr. Markovitz held management positions at Sierra Designs, Adidas, CNET and Asics Tiger. Learn More...
SIGN UP FOR TIMEBACK
NEWS, ARTICLES & UPDATES
NEWS, ARTICLES & UPDATES
Leveling; smoothing out the flow; e.g., doing two performance evaluations a day for 3 weeks, rather than ten a day for three days -- and then needing to take a vacation because you're so burned out.
Overburdening people, process, or equipment; e.g., people working 100 hour weeks for months on end -- come to think of it, like most lawyers and accountants.
Uneveness or variability; e.g., leaving work at the normal time on Thursday, but having to stay at the office till midnight on Friday because the boss finally got around to giving you that project...at 4:30pm.
Waste; activities that your customer doesn't value and doesn't want to pay for; e.g., billing your customer for the really expensive 10am FedEx delivery because you didn't finish the document on time.
Do I really have the drivng force backwards?
Madeline,
No argument: employers have increasingly high expectations of employees these days, and the demands of the current business environment do necessitate longer hours.
But. . . people *are* giving up vacation time voluntarily (i.e., not taking their allotted 2 weeks). Employers can't force workers to give that up. And people do work on Sundays, even though employers can't mandate that either.
The fact is that if you spent 24 hours everyday in the office, you *still* wouldn't get everything done. There's always more work to do. So where you draw the line -- at 15 hours, or 12 hours, or 10 hours -- is in a sense immaterial. You won't get everything done.
I'm suggesting that since you won't/can't get everything done, you might as well make the time a bit shorter. This will cause some of the inefficiencies (in your own work habits or in the system) to surface so that they can be addressed and fixed.