Two People Doing the Same Job Destroys Productivity. Here's Why.
Author: Bryan Beckstead

Productivity is all about getting the maximum amount of
production from the minimum amount of activity. That's why
two people doing the same job destroys any pretense of
getting value from either person's involvement. Let's look
at the classic example.

You have been planning your day's activities, in advance,
as you should. You have decided that you want a specific
person in your organization to perform a specific job and
you have also time activated that activity to be done today
between 10:00 AM and Noon. All is the way it should be.

You get to work and you relay your instructions to your
employee and head off to do what you have planned for the
day. After lunch you decide to check in on your employee
and see how he did on that task you had asked him to do. A
quick glance and you discover a disaster. Not only was the
task that you had asked to be done not done as you asked,
but your employee had taken it upon himself to do an
entirely unrelated task that had not been necessary, in
place of what you had asked and expected to be done. What
had gone wrong?

First, someone's time was now totally wasted. Either your
time was now wasted, the time you spent on planning,
detailing, and organizing the task. Or your employee had
just wasted two hours doing a task you had not wanted done.
This is the classic productivity waste when two people
decide to do the same job and in the end, the job is not
done and everyone has to start from scratch.

In this case, when you approach the employee and ask them
why the initial job was not done, he or she will invariably
start off with the rationale of "I thought ..." detailing
their reason why not doing what you wanted and replacing it
with a job of their choosing makes more sense. I wish I
had a dollar for every time I have heard that rationale.

"I thought" has no place in this situation. You, the
person in charge have already done the thinking in this
situation. The time has been spent on the thinking part of
this process; two people do not have to independently think
through this task. By your employee taking it upon himself
to rethink your decision and reverse it and go off on his
own, makes your entire management decision function
redundant. How does it feel to be made redundant?

Every time this happens in your company, your business,
your day to day living, you are forced to spend at least
twice as much time doing simple tasks because you are
letting people make you redundant and unnecessary. How
often does this happen to you? You invest your time only
to find out that when you hand off the task or project to
some one else, it takes on a life of its own. This
situation plays out a number of different ways but the end
result is, activities take substantially longer to get done
because the initial thought process was ignored.

The solution to this problem is simple; decide who is in
charge and let that person make the decisions. I said it
was a simple problem, not necessary an easy solution. One
person per task, one person making the decisions, everybody
does their job, things have a chance of getting done on
time and in a reasonable time frame. It sounds so simple
but the reality is, very few companies, businesses or
organizations can accomplish it.

In seminars when I caution people about running companies
with the "I thought" mentality, they get offended and
defensive. They counter with "people have a right to
express themselves and they have a right to have their
voice heard". I agree with all of that, except the part
when all of this freedom of speech and sharing is suppose
to take place. If you want to get a reasonable return on
your time, get production up where it should be, you have
to start to get your people and yourself on the same page
when it comes to setting the course and getting things
accomplished.

Someone has to make the decisions and then someone has to
carry out those decisions, period. It's not a debating
team you are running; it's a business.


About the Author:

Bryan Beckstead is the creator of the Power Empowerment
Group and has been involved in the Time Management and
Productivity industries for almost 35 years. If you are
really serious about improving your quality of life, visit
him at http://www.powerempowerment.com
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