A Productivity Parable
Sociosomatics, shared schemas, and team cohesion – why we need to decouple productivity from efficiency.
There once was a team of product designers and program/product managers who all had different perspectives and responsibilities for the process of ushering new products from conception to launch. Some focused on product look and feel, others on the engineering, some on supply chain, others on distribution, some on prototyping, and others on customer research.
Every year this team of almost twenty had to plan for multiple seasons of product launches. And once every year, the entire team would converge on one long wall in their workspace at the company’s global headquarters to plan the entire year. For almost two weeks, they would spend every day using post it notes, tape, sharpies, and posters to plan their entire process for every product launch that year. Throughout their time together, the discussions would range far and wide. After the workday some would even go out for dinner and continue the conversation, all the while peppering personal stories. These weeks were a joyfully anticipated annual event, and every team member went back to their day to day feeling inspired and excited for the upcoming year, as well as more connected to their colleagues.
Throughout the year, the team would update the plan on the wall and move the post-its and posters to their updated positions. Then one day, a sales rep for a Hot New Project Management SaaS Company™ (HNPMSC) convinced the manager of this team that they could optimize and improve their planning and management process by using the HNPMSC’s GeeWhiz Project Management Software®.
“Instead of moving dozens of post-its every once and awhile, just click this one button!” He said. “Wow,” said the team collectively, “we could save tons of time!”
So the team adopted the GeeWhiz Project Management Software® and began migrating all of their analog post-it notes into the platform. They even hired an integration consultant to help their team make the transition and learn the new software. They began new “agile” ways of working and enthusiastically downloaded the GeeWhiz Project Management Software® app on their phones. It was an exciting time, “we’re becoming a modern team” some thought to themselves.
Eventually, the learning curve plateaued and the team became use to the new tool. But something was different. It was as if they were working faster, but it felt more like compressed. Sure, tasks and activities could be broken down into smaller chunks and dependencies could be drawn between them, but the work felt more fragmented. More and more time each day wa spent updating the ‘micro tasks,’ marking things as done, writing notes on tasks, and juggling assignments. Sometimes critical details were missed as they became buried in the layers of asynchronous chat threads. The team began to resent the pings and dings of to-dos and the so-called management of the management.
It was annual planning time again. Though this year the whole team didn’t need to come together. The two project managers on the team were able to outline the entire year’s schedule in just four days.
There were no debates around process. There were no shared epiphanies. No shared dreams. No happy hours. No collective envisioning of what could be; just two project managers outlining what should be. No inefficiencies. Just rigorous and efficient project planning.
The work continued. Products were launched. But something had changed and no one could quite put their finger on it. It was almost as if they had become much more efficient, but far less effective. Quantity of output was up, but the jury was out on quality.
Within two years, half the team had turned over. “The culture just isn’t what it used to be.”
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