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We don’t have enough people.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of comparing the number of employees in an organization to the amount of work to do.? The assumption is the organization can accomplish more by adding more people. But this rationale takes the focus of solution delivery off process efficiency. It’s more a ‘brute-force’ mentality. Plus, let’s face it, adding more people to a team is complicated:

• More people adds more strain to inter-team communication. Whatever communication inefficiencies exist in the current team will become more pronounced with more people.
• More people exposes deficiencies in the training and development of new people in the company’s culture, business, and process flows.
• More people may just move process bottlenecks to another department. For example, if you add more developers then you need more business analysts for requirements documentation to keep them busy.
• More people places a value on short-term rather than long-term thinking.

The right process produces the right results.

There are times when staff should be expanded. But it shouldn’t be the first answer when the existing staff feels stressed about the workload. A better approach is examining the current environment for ways to work more efficiently. I know, this sounds like basic business logic. But focusing on process improvement rarely gets done because it’s hard work.? Process-focused leaders look for ways to work smarter knowing that in the long run, it will deliver greater capacity and more value-added results. Process-focused discussions go to the source of what is happening by rolling up their sleeves and talking to the employees involved in the day-to-day. I don’t view this approach as “doing more with less”, rather, I like to think of it as doing more with what you already have.?

Some approaches to consider:

• Develop existing employees before adding more. - Existing staff are already committed to the business. There’s no greater form of respect than to double down on the existing team by investing in their skills development and involving them in making existing processes more efficient.?
• Align work to the mission. - The mission focuses on outcomes. My experience is when I tackle a problem to solve for an outcome, it keeps the focus on the process instead of people.?
• Write less code - If we jump to writing code, we’ve missed the opportunity to solve the problem by simplifying the process. The ultimate solution may require less code (or different code). Keep it simple!

Onward and upward!