Collective loss of thinking time.

One of the regular complaints of most of my colleagues, both seniors and juniors, is that they have too much to do and too less time. Everybody is mostly busy. In almost all the projects that I have worked in, there were always some people who always had the “busy” status on Microsoft teams. It almost seemed that if they changed their status to “available” even for once, their credibility will be questioned. Some people could very well be busy all the time, but can that be the case with the majority? And for a minute, let’s assume that most of the folks are indeed that busy, then why is it so difficult to find happy clients? I mean if everyone is working so hard and yet we mostly have dissatisfied clients, something is wrong. I remember that every time when we had to pitch in response to a Request for Proposal(RFP) from a new probable client, there were always just the same 2-3 past projects that we would show as reference or 'credentials'. Just 2-3 out of almost 50 projects done so far! Which basically means, that even though we were a big company, were able to get projects, had hard-working people working in top roles in these projects, yet we were not able to deliver good quality projects. I am not saying that our projects were failures. However, most of our clients expected much more from a company of our repute and hence were left unsatisfied and not so happy with quality of projects delivered.

When one of my bosses was leaving the organization, he sent a final message mentioning how glad he was to work with all the intelligent people in his team. It seemed to me that he took a lot of effort in writing his farewell email, the focus of which was his adoration for the smart group of highly organized and committed individuals that he was leading. His email again left me wondering that if most of us are so intelligent then why is the result not great most of the times? Why do we end up leaving an array of unsatisfied clients who do not have flattering things to say about us?

Let’s get back to the busy status of people on Microsoft Teams. Based on discussion with a lot of new joiners in the organization and also my personal experience (especially when I was just starting), the response one gets on team from someone depends on how up the corporate ladder they are. My experience is of course limited, but I have seen so many people responding to chats from unknown colleagues by first looking at whether they are up or down the hierarchy from them. Most of the leads who are supposed to be available for their team members & juniors do not respond (to subordinates) or respond often late (I know I am generalizing here and of course there are many exceptions, but they are just that. Exceptions.). Anyway, giving people the benefit of doubt, I would assume that they only choose to respond to whom they have to respond. And they do that only because they are very busy and so they must respect their time. In USA & Europe, while working directly at client locations, I didn’t find people as busy as they are in India. People had time to respond and were generally more open to spending time for discussions. It didn’t seem like people were always in a rush.

One of my colleagues told me a few months back in a favor full tone “You know you are one of the few folks who I respond to quickly on teams. I don’t do that for others”. While he was hopeful that I will take this with gratitude, it left me wondering why is that the case. Not that why he responds to me, but why does he not respond to others. He was involved in a lot of things, and I could sense that he would often have a busy schedule, but I also think he chose that for himself. He chose to be involved in a lot of activities which kept him busy but on the other hand, didn’t really add any value to his role as a leader and neither did they benefit his team. Based on what I see around, majority of folks who do not have a min to spare, are not actually busy making the best use of their time. Most of the activities they are involved in are mediocre (in terms of creating value) and take up a lot of time. It sounds counterintuitive but then why would they do that? Simply because that is how they are judged. Quality of things becomes secondary in the crazy race that most of us are in (especially in India). It is more about how much or how many than how well.

In my previous organization, one of the endeavors that some super smart top leader came up with was to create artefacts for standardized solution which could be used for jumpstarting projects. After millions of dollars of investment and only a few actual use cases, the program was shut down, renamed, rebranded, and relaunched. A lot of people made careers through that however, the end value of the product was never realized. I do understand that even after a lot of effort, some projects don’t take off and fail and that is natural. However, I have some first had experience with this specific project and so i know what went wrong. The purpose from the beginning was to create as many artefacts as possible without focusing more on the quality of these documents. The documents were mostly created by new joiners who would copy paste information from online available content. People who could create really good quality documents were busy doing other important stuff as creating documents was not the best use of their time (and for some, it was beneath them). I am not saying this was a bad idea however, making sure that the documents were of good quality just became secondary as the target was driven by number of documents created. I think it is becoming a culture for people in most organizations to get involved in several half-baked ideas without really planning them through in detail. Because from top to bottom, the goal is get involved in a lot of things as quickly as possible. Because getting involved in many things matters. It is mostly about the count and not the quality. How many trainings you did matters, how well you were rated doesn’t. How many client proposals did you do matters, how many people did you train to do client proposals doesn’t. How much did you speak matters, how well is your communication doesn’t.

I can understand why this practice of dipping your hands in multiple things has become so prevalent. Most people managers don’t really have time to do the qualitative analysis of activities done by every individual who they are supposed to supervise. It is just too difficult specially in a setup when they are not working with their subordinates on a day-to-day basis. So, they rely on the number of things done. I am not saying that that is the only thing that counts. Of course, it doesn’t. You cannot just participate in many things without contributing and get rewarded. However, it is true that the practice of being mediocre in several redundant & mostly useless initiatives is preferred over being good qualitatively in a few things. But the reason it bothers me is not whether the right people are rewarded or not. That is not as important than the other side effect which is- the loss of time to think. A lot of our day to day, requires objective analysis and understanding of issues for better resolutions. We are losing that habit. In a rush to get involved in a variety of things (especially because others are doing so, and our bosses are liking it) we end up producing consultants who are not critical thinkers. Yes, they can handle many things at a time & maybe they can also handle stress better but can most of them think through things properly before coming up with suggestions? Most probably not. And I really hope that changes sooner than later.