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Parkinson’s Law and what it teaches us about time and money (Part 1)

Published: November 9, 2021

I was wandering around in Berlin in 2019 when I stumbled upon a little book in a tiny second-hand corner-bookshop in Bergmanstrasse in Kreuzberg, Germany. It reminded me of a “law” that I was first introduced to by a long-time colleague and mentor from my Citadel days, Wikus Marais. This law boils down to the fact that, if we create capacity, it will eventually be filled – whether with good stuff or nonsense – to the brim. That law is Parkinson’s Law. And the little book, which I of course immediately purchased, was titled: Parkinson’s Law or the Pursuit of Progress.

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Now, first of all, Parkinson’s Law should not be confused with Parkinson’s Disease. It is not the same Parkinson. Parkinson's Disease, as we all know, is the disorder of the central nervous system that affects movement. The disease is named after English physician James Parkinson, who in 1817 published a comprehensive description titled An Essay on the Shaking Palsy.

Parkinson’s Law, on the other hand, was “founded” much later by the British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who wrote a satirical essay that was published in The Economist in 1955. The concept that Parkinson introduced was framed in the opening line of his essay as: “Work expands to fill the period of time available for its completion”. It soon took on a life of its own, forming the basis of several more essays and eventually the book mentioned above, leading to public lectures by Parkinson around the world. The concept was studied by productivity economists at length. In fact, Parkinson’s Law was globally accepted and implemented across industries. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, was one of the most notable patrons of its approach, noting in the 1980s when the Soviet Union bureaucracy was in its death throws, that “Parkinson’s law works everywhere”.

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And as our world transitions into a hybrid workplace and economy, where digital and physical get ever more blurred, the concept of Parkinson’s Law, yet again, becomes important to draw lessons from. Work is not a place you go to anymore, but what you do, wherever you do it from and whenever you decide to do it. As many of us are grappling with how to stay productive, how to avoid burnout, how to adjust to new boundaries and norms, I was prompted to dust off this old little classic of the 1950s.

In his opening paragraph, Parkinson uses the example of an elderly lady who writes a postcard to her niece. “An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition… The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told, may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil… work (and especially paper work) is thus elastic in its demands on time, and there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned.”

Parkinson was well qualified to make these statements having worked in the British Civil Service for most of his career and seeing first-hand how bureaucracy ticks. Parkinson’s original intent was not to take aim at old ladies writing postcards, but rather at the inefficiencies introduced by the bureaucratisation of the British Civil Service.

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Parkinson pointed to two critical elements that lead to bureaucratisation: (1) what he called the Law of Multiplication of Subordinates (the tendency of managers to hire two or more subordinates to report to them so that neither is in direct competition with the manager themselves); and (2) the fact that bureaucrats create work for other bureaucrats, or the Law of Multiplication of Work.

To understand the first element, the multiplication of subordinates, it is perhaps best to quote from Parkinson’s original 1955 essay:

“We must picture a civil servant called A who finds himself overworked. Whether this overwork is real or imaginary is immaterial; but we should observe, in passing, that A’s sensation (or illusion) might easily result from his own decreasing energy – a normal symptom of middle-age. There are, broadly speaking, three possible remedies: resignation, halving the work with a colleague called B, or demanding the assistance of two subordinates, to be called C and D.

“There is probably no instance in civil service history of A choosing any but the third alternative. By resignation he would lose his pension rights. By having B appointed – on his own level in the hierarchy – he would merely bring in a rival for promotion to W’s vacancy when W (at long last) retires. So A would rather have C and D, junior men, below him. They will add to his consequence; and, by dividing the work into two categories, he will have the merit of being the only man who comprehends them both. To appoint C alone would have been impossible. Why? Because C, if by himself, would divide the work with A and so assume almost the equal status which has been refused in the first instance to B; a status the more emphasised if C is A’s only possible successor. Subordinates must thus number two or more, each being kept in order by fear of the other’s promotion. When C complains in turn of being overworked (as he certainly will) A will, with the concurrence of C, advise the appointment of two assistants to help C. But he can then avert internal friction only by advising the appointment of two more assistants to help D, whose position is much the same. With this recruitment of E, F, G and H, the promotion of A is now practically certain.”

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Seven officials now ultimately do the work that one did before. But this is where the second element, the multiplication of work, kicks in, and again it is best to quote from Parkinson:

“These seven make so much work for each other that all are fully occupied, and A is actually working harder than ever. An incoming document may well come before each of them in turn. Official E decides that it falls within the province of F, who places a draft reply before C, who amends it drastically before consulting D, who asks G to deal with it. But G goes on leave at this point, handing the file over to H, who drafts a minute, which is signed by D and returned to C, who revises his draft accordingly and lays the new version before A. What does A do? He would have every excuse for signing the thing unread, for he has many other matters on his mind. Knowing now that he is to succeed W next year, he has to decide whether C or D should succeed to his own office. He had to agree to G going on leave, although not yet strictly entitled to it. He is worried whether H should not have gone instead, for reasons of health. He has looked pale recently – partly but not solely because of his domestic troubles. Then there is the business of F’s special increment of salary for the period of the conference, and E’s application for transfer to the Ministry of Pensions. A has heard that D is in love with a married typist and that G and F are no longer on speaking terms – no one seems to know why. So, A might be tempted to sign C’s draft and have done with it.

“But A is a conscientious man. Beset as he is with problems created by his colleagues for themselves and for him – created by the mere fact of these officials’ existence – he is not the man to shirk his duty. He reads through the draft with care, deletes the fussy paragraphs added by C and H and restores the thing back to the form preferred in the first instance by the able (if quarrelsome) F. He corrects the English – none of these young men can write grammatically – and finally produces the same reply he would have written if officials C to H had never been born. Far more people have taken far longer to produce the same result. No one has been idle. All have done their best. And it is late in the evening before A finally quits his office and begins the return journey to Ealing. The last of the office lights are being turned off in the gathering dusk which marks the end of another day’s administrative toil. Among the last to leave, A reflects, with bowed shoulders and a wry smile, that late hours, like grey hairs, are among the penalties of success.”

I think all of us who have spent time in bigger organisations have witnessed the drill. It typically starts with a flat hierarchy, perhaps two engineers on a particular project, say. As the organisation grows, assistants are hired, who in turn get promoted and hire their own subordinates. A pyramid starts to develop. Artificial layers might be added that serve no purpose other than the ability to promote people to please them and keep them motivated. And when the pyramid gets very large, expenses eats up profits and the sludge makes the corporate wheels spin ever slower, and some might even grind to a halt. And if the bureaucratic body is not drastically reduced at this stage, it will surely die.

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When we, in corporates, tackle budgets for a new financial year, we should always be acutely aware of Parkinson’s Law, and more specifically his laws of the multiplication of subordinates and the multiplication of work. And generally, any unwarranted increases in bureaucracy (or a bureaucratic culture) should make us tremble and blow mortal fear into our hearts. Because unchecked increases in bureaucracy (whether in staff, budgets, policies, rules, culture, ways of work, whatever) eventually lead to the death of organisations. Young and nimble competitors cause bureaucracies to trod off, like the dinosaurs of millions years past, into extinction. Jack Welsh, the late CEO of GE, noted in his biography, Jack, that one of his most important jobs as CEO, if not the most important, was to fight bureaucracy every day.

But back to productivity, what can we do to turn Parkinson’s Law around and make it work to our advantage? How can we become more productive, get more out of our fixed endowment of time and energy? What lessons can we draw?

Here are a few tips and practices:

  • Do not lose sight of the end goal. (Or as Stephen Covey famously framed it in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Begin with the end in mind.) At the start of a project or a task, the group or person should be made painfully aware what the project or task’s value is (the vision if you like), how it fits into the bigger picture, why it makes sense for the organisation. That creates purpose and empowers the person or team members to see the impact of their work. It will ignite their motivation and sense of ownership, but also guide trade-offs with other priorities. Which brings me to the second point.
  • Prioritise. Figure out which tasks are really important for the overall end goal and which might be absolutely useless. Pay attention to the important ones, those on the critical path, and cull the unimportant and the waste. In fact, while Parkinson’s Law is most often talked about in regard to personal productivity, it really rears its ugly head in group settings where counterproductive tendencies are ever-present. A by-law of Parkinson’s Law is the Law of Triviality which states that people within organisations often give undue time and attention to trivial matters. Make the criteria of what is important strict, to filter out the aspects where the real focus should be, and make the penalties for wasting time on focusing on the unimportant (or for those adding unimportant waste to precious time endowments) harsh.
  • The so-called DACI framework can also help to filter out unnecessary friction and trash. For big projects with many different players in the mix, establish clear roles and where everyone fits in. The D stands for Driver, the person responsible for a particular job. You can also think of D as the Do-er. A is for Approver, the one person who makes the decision. C is for the Contributors, who have the expertise, skills and knowledge to assist with a job and influence a decision (they have a voice, but not the vote). And I is for Informed, they just need to know about something to do their own jobs, but are otherwise not involved in the particular job. This framework helps to streamline expectations around communication and feedback, which can be major sticking points in group projects.
  • Then, if you think about it, a big part of filling the time available to get the job done is work that expands: scope-creep. Nip this in the bud from the start, be very clear what is in scope and what is out of scope. And remember that scope is part of the triangular vectors to play with in any job: time, scope, budget. It is almost the exact opposite of Parkinson’s Law: rather than work expanding to fit the allotted time, work (scope) is reduced to fit the time window.
  • And then perhaps the most important trick of all: Establish deadlines by which a job should be completed. And make the deadlines as tight as possible. This instills a greater sense of urgency to get the work started, which eliminates procrastination. Oh, are all of us not so often guilty of procrastinating! Looming deadlines are motivating, that fast-approaching end-date or end-time gives us a much-needed kick on the backside to buckle down and focus. One can even use that human longing for competition to make this work – you have to win against the clock, strive to beat it as if it was your opponent. And reward yourself if you do; penalise yourself if you do not.
  • Finally, crush the cockroaches of productivity, look for those little time-fillers, like e-mail, news, social media and feed-reading, those little pests that do not really add value, but steal time. Instead of doing the leisurely half hour morning e-mail check, give yourself only ten minutes (or go one better, make it five). The morning paper? Ten at the most. Or ask yourself if it really adds value, perhaps it is an award or prize if you ace your deadline; if you do not, then no newspaper, social network or feed-reading.

 

But it is not only in time management and productivity that Parkinson’s Law has applications. It can be generalised to many aspects in life.

Follow my blog and read in the next post how this can be applied to other aspects of life, including one’s finances.

 

 

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