Doing More With Less—
Good Idea, But Will It Work?
James A. Vaughan, Ph.D.
Yes—without question! Every corporation in America can do more with less—not just a little more, but a lot more. Not because workers haven't been working hard enough, but because they haven't been asked and empowered to work differently.
Not only is it possible to do more with less, it's essential for long-term survival. The marketplace is sending clear signals to that effect now. Sooner or later, your Board, your customers, your suppliers, and hopefully, your employees will demand it of your organization.
If doing more with less is the wave of the future, then why doesn't everyone embrace it now? There are two major reasons. First, many fear losing their job. Second, it requires substantial change on everyone's part—and major change is never easy.
It's crucial to make a clear distinction between two ways of doing more with less. Let's just call the first one working harder. It's possible to achieve some incremental improvement in productivity by having everyone work a little more efficiently (or longer) at the jobs they currently perform. This is not the path I'm advocating, but many companies
will pursue this one because they don't have the discipline and the vision to go for what's possible.
The path that is in everyone's best interest bears no resemblance to the first one. Let's call this second path working differently. It involves everyone in the organization in rethinking what they do at work. We have trained individuals to do a job. Now we need to train them to be team players and to focus on the work that needs to get done in order to meet customer needs better than any of our competitors.
Working differently opens up the possibility of quantum leaps in productivity improvement—but not for the faint of heart. You must be willing to make major changes in the way work is performed. Everyone—from top to bottom—must be willing to give up some cherished ways of thinking about and doing their jobs.
Here are a few specific things that I think are essential to pursue this second path:
- Managers must be willing to share the power and control they’ve worked so hard to get.
- Everyone's job, including the CEO's, must be open to examination and possible change.
- Empowerment must become more than a buzzword. Employees at every level must be encouraged to think. They must be given real authority to act—to try things on the spot in the belief that failures will be occasions for learning.
- Everyone must have easy access to all the information relevant to their work.
- Teamwork must become the way of life—especially the ability to form and disband special function teams readily.
- Departmental boundaries must be made permeable or torn down altogether. There will be no place for turf on this path.
- Compensation programs must be revised to reflect the changes in the way work is being done. Fairness will be a key issue. This will not be easy.
- Every person must make a clear commitment to learning—on their own, as a team-member, and as an organization.
- Trust will be more important than ever. You need people to challenge sacred policies—to say the things that have been on many people's minds but could not be spoken aloud in the past. They will not do it if they fear the consequences.
There is no way to take this course without creating ambiguity and uncertainty, but doesn't that already exist in your organization today? It would be interesting to hear leaders from the computer industry, telecommunications, health care, banking, utilities, and airlines debate which is undergoing the most change. Two things they would all agree on—change is the only constant in today's business world, and no one can see very far into the future.
We will not get back on track when things settle down because they will not settle down and there is no track to get back on. New tracks are being laid every day and no one knows where they will lead.
There are many forces driving the change, but certainly the emergence of the global marketplace has given American corporations a major-league wake-up call. Faced with worthy competitors from all over the world invading their markets, they have been forced to reexamine every aspect of the way they do business.
Many have concluded they have been overstaffed for too long, as evidenced by the massive downsizing of the past several years. It's no one's fault in particular. We all colluded in the prevailing belief that bigger was better, and most corporations added layer upon layer of managers and professional staff. Our success kept us from learning what was there
to be learned from our experience. Those days are gone forever.
It's unfortunate, to say the least, that so many individuals have been hurt in the downsizing that has been part of this learning process. Reducing costs has been an imperative for organizational survival, and the way it has been done has often been clumsy and without a great deal of careful thought.
It's also very unfortunate that a lot of downsizing has been done in the name of reengineering when, in fact, it was NOT reengineering. When downsizing occurs without the kind of analysis that leads to working differently, the remaining employees are usually asked to pick up the slack left by those cut. They end up working longer hours with more
responsibility, but no more pay—and eventually a lot of heartburn.
This has happened enough to give reengineering a bad reputation. Many view its purpose to be downsizing, which is not the case. The purpose of reengineering is to discover how to do things differently and more effectively. For most organizations this requires a profound cultural change.
I believe senior managers realize the growing imperative to do more with less, and enough companies are doing it to make it clear that it's possible. I also believe a large number of employees are skeptical. Some believe all this is just one more ploy on the part of managers to squeeze more productivity out of them and more profit out of the company.
A crucial task of leaders today is to help everyone in the organization see the urgent need for this kind of change. Whether your company does business in international markets or not, you can be sure some of your customers and suppliers do. Your employees need to understand that every organization—every local grocery store, drug store, clothing store,
hardware, etc.—is impacted by the global marketplace.
As a cultural change consultant to senior managers, I have great respect for the difficulty of this task. Take the single issue of empowerment. Most employees are not prepared to be empowered. We have conditioned them in the opposite direction.
At a time when you need your employees to change quickly—to immediately begin to take responsibility and to become very different kinds of team players—what you may have is a workforce that feels powerless, increasingly distrustful of senior managers, and fearful of losing their job. Contrary to what some managers still believe, fear is not a good motivator.
If you want to help your employees embrace the process of doing more with less, you must:
- give them more information than ever before.
- be honest in saying out loud that you cannot guarantee anyone's job security.
- acknowledge you are asking a lot of them at a time when many feel they are giving too much already.
- give them substantive tools to address the stresses of change everyone is experiencing on and off the job.
- put yourself in the same change stew with them.
American workers are savvy, intelligent, resilient—and basically fair-minded. Given all the information, they will reach the same conclusion many managers have reached—we must do more with less and we can. It is in everyone's self-interest.
They will come to see that the best way to protect their job at any level and to insure the survival of the corporation is to constantly improve their ability to add value and to do their part to develop a learning organization. As information continues to expand exponentially and becomes available more and more rapidly on a worldwide basis, the
ability to learn as an organization will separate the winners from the losers.
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