Liberating Latent Capacity

Would it surprise you to learn that there is at least 25% latent capacity in your office today?

How do I know this to be true? And better yet, how can I convince you of this?

Let’s ask ourselves some simple, but common sense questions.

• How is it possible that someone can take a full week of vacation off and yet all their work gets completed in their absence?
• How is it that staff members seem to always be behind, but then the day before vacations gets completely caught up?

The answer is based in science and human behavior.

1.)   Time buffering. Most all humans wish to be seen as reliable and trustworthy. One way we do this is to buffer the estimates of time that work should take.  

“Tim.. when will you be done with that project?“ While I know it should take 1hr, I might respond “3hrs”… just in case I need it.

Why have I done this? To ensure that I have more than enough time and protect my reputation as someone who is reliable. At the same time though I did inflate the needed time by 3x.

2.)   Parkinson's Law. This essentially says that “work expands as to fill the time available for completion”.

Yes, my professor would assign me homework on a Wednesday that was due the following Monday. When did I begin working on it? Yes, of course… Sunday night. In other words, I expanded the time available to then complete the work.

When we layer Parkinson’s Law on top of Time Buffering we observe large amounts of wasted capacity that seemingly evaporates.

The next time someone is out of the office on vacation (or sick) and you see that all their work is being completed despite their absence, ask yourself whether it might not be a good opportunity to try an experiment?

Instead of having them return to their ‘day job’, have them instead assist in another area “temporarily” that would better add to the profitability of the business..

The point here is to prove to yourself that you truly have at least 25% latent capacity.

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