WFH is Dead! Long Live WFH!

Every few months someone proclaims the death of this working-from-home silliness. Citing indisputably indisputable sources, they assure us that our long nightmare of comfort and efficiency is over. "Rejoice!" they tell us! All who toil in their comfy clothes under the scornful eye of their pet cat, "Buttons"...fear not! The commutes, cubicles, and in-person meetings that are the God-given right of every man, woman and child with at least an associates degree from a regionally accredited college or university will be yours again soon. 

But then someone invariably comes along with "comprehensive data" that "reflects the real world" and ruins the party. Alas, it's our sad duty to report new evidence that, once again, confirms our darkest fears: that every job and every employee is different and that cramming us all back into the one-size-fits-all world that recognized the sanctity of on-site work just ain't happening. Sigh. 

Links to People, Publications, and Podcasts Mentioned in This Episode:

0:24 - John Martin, Ph.D., Wright State University

0:27 - Fed-Up Managers Declare Wfh Is Over, as 77% Say They’d Fire You or Cut Your Pay for Not Coming Back to the Office

1:04 - Asana Report: Anatomy of Work Global Index

1:16 - Shady Stats and the Status Quo

9:12 - Inflation and the Paradoxical Pay Raise

15:15 - SHRM (Society for Human Research Management)

25:36 - The Efficiency Paradox

26:21 - BS Jobs

28:09 - Manage Things, Lead People: The Curt Tueffert Interview

30:22 - The "Year of Structure" Episodes: The Four-Day Work Week The Year of Gettin' S**t Done

Visit us at busynessparadox.com for the transcript to this episode. Check out some of our blog posts and other content while you’re there!

Come visit us at busynessparadox.com to see episode transcripts, blog posts and other content while you’re there!

Transcript

Frank Butler  0:17  
Hello Busybodies, welcome to another episode of the Busyness Paradox. I am Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey  0:23  
Good day, Frank

Frank Butler  0:24  
Welcome to another great week, where we are going to talk about probably the future of work work from home kind of ideas. This was triggered in response to an article that was shared with me by John Martin, Wright State University. About "fed-up managers declare work from home is over, as 77% say they they would fire or cut pay for not returning to the office."

Paul Harvey  0:50  
Now, that is almost the actual word-for-word title of this article, by the way, yes, it is literally "Fed Up Managers Declare WFH Is Over [comma] as 77% Say They'd Fire You or Cut Your Pay For Not Coming Back to the Office." That's like...a paragraph.

Frank Butler  1:04  
That's a paragraph title, clickbait. We dove into it a little bit, we're kind of suspicious about the way the data is run. So we're probably going to take a deeper dive into this particular study. For more, try to go check out our Shady Stats episode to kind of understand why we...why we have a little consternation using something like this as being our reference point. However, going into a- another study from actually somebody we respect the Society for Human Resource Management. They said that 72% of managers currently, supervising remote workers would prefer their subordinates to be in office now that doesn't say anything about firing or cutting pay or anything like that, just giving a preference. So with that, things are changing. And this is where we get into this notion of, Hey, there's this incredible survey done by this other organization, Asana on the US anatomy of work, global index 2022, titled, embracing the new age of agility. And we're not going to get into the whole report, we're going to probably break this out into other pieces too, because we don't want to just bore you guys. And...

Paul Harvey  1:18  
We can farm a whole season out of just these reports from Asana. 

Frank Butler  2:18  
Yes

Paul Harvey  2:19  
There's a lot of good stuff here.

Frank Butler  2:21  
Right we're going to do is we are going to focus in on this sort of first component, which is discussing change being essential. So before we really dive into that, let's go back to this notion of people or managers are saying that 77% would fire you or cut your pay if you don't return to the office. Now, I think that's a bold statement to make considering it would be very difficult, in some cases to back this up, largely because there is a huge amount of opportunity out there for people, lots of jobs available.

Paul Harvey  2:56  
And we have no indication that despite the the title of this article, which I won't read again, because we just don't have time, but it starts off with the words fed up managers declared wfh is over, I've not heard anything about managers being fed up, fed up at not being able to like hire enough people. Because yes, of the way things have been. And you know that it is important. Keep in mind that that won't be the case forever. You know, interest rates need to climb to get inflation down near there's probably going to be a pullback at some point. So that's all this is transitory. But point being I just don't, I don't get the sense that this is a thing that's actually happening.

Frank Butler  3:35  
Well, and I think if it is a thing happening, this is where this Asana study really shed some light into maybe what's going on. And I teach executive education, I taught on strategic change for a while in my strategy, graduate class, we have a module on strategic change. And it comes back to and I've said it before in the show, people don't like change, they really don't inherently they don't like change. And it becomes, I think, more difficult to embrace change as you age. Because you have to undo habits you've had or things that you're accustomed to, and you're like, I'm getting too old for this bleep, you know, to borrow from Lethal Weapon, right? I'm getting too old for and...

Paul Harvey  4:17  
That’s a deep pull. I like it.

Frank Butler  4:20  
And that's sort of where we're at right now, I think is this notion of, we have to change. And I think what's critical to understand is that because of technology where it's at today, we can do a lot of things to improve the work environment without having to have the work environment. And by that I mean the office, sometimes. I mean, I think there's benefits to face to face.

Paul Harvey  4:48  
Yeah. To be clear, we're not saying that work at the office is dead, and it's there's no place for it anymore. No, we're not saying that either. And can't do this point, I don't know, if you notice, Frank, one of these Asana reports pulled out a quote from Dr. Sahar use of from Cal Berkeley he did. He says it's not enough for us to execute more in isolation, companies need a playbook to bring back debate, open brainstorming in an increasingly remote world. I think that's a valid point, too.

Frank Butler  5:19  
I think that's the key. And this is where I was going with this is that managers who are unwilling to learn about how to lead their people in a more hybrid, or work from home or remote environment, are doing themselves a disservice. Because if you really want to get the best people for the positions you have available, sometimes it's not going to be in your area, you might need some sort of specialists that's not going to be living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, you need and they're coming out of someplace, maybe in Boise, Idaho, but they don't want to leave Idaho cost of living is in their favorite what was until sort of this whole panic, too used to be used to be but you know, something along those lines, and so therefore, you can hire that person. But now you have to figure out how to integrate them into the team, because they are remote. And I think that's what it is, is that we need to do more to educate or learn as a manager? How do we help continue these processes that we had that were face to face? How do we replicate that more, with a really wonky team at this point, right, we might have some people in office, we might have some people online, those kinds of things. In fact, I just did a meeting just a little bit ago, today, with an organization where one person was in the office, one person was in a different city at a hotel, and the other three were working from home. So that gives you an idea of the benefits of this environment. And to be able to have meetings at a more productive rate for everybody. And when you can get everybody together. But starting to think about, hey, this is a great way for us to actually be more effective and more efficient at doing our jobs. Now let's leverage it. And keeping good people too.

Paul Harvey  7:02  
And so much of it just comes down to flexibility to sort of take it as it comes, you know, instead of having a blanket policy, like we're all coming back, we're all going remote, 50% remote, just take it as it comes, you know, maybe we need someone who can do this, Oh, we found someone who can do this. They're up in Boise. All right. Well, for let's see, how about we do we arrange that this way? As opposed to saying, I'm fed up, I'm going to cut everyone's pay, who doesn't come back to work. And I get the sense that that's the predominant the prevailing attitude that because we've been kind of forced to a lot of companies, a lot of managers have kind of settled in on that, you know, that sense of flexibility as not such a bad thing, not being able to plan? Let me back up. It makes certain planning aspects more difficult than I think two years ago, that would have been the deal breaker for a lot of people, but I don't really think it is anymore. I think this baked in increase in inherent flexibility is just sort of in the DNA of the workplace now for a lot of companies anyway, hopefully I'm right.

Frank Butler  8:05  
I think you're right, I think more and more companies are looking at because I think it's it's a source of not competitive advantage, necessarily. But I think it's more of a source of how do we not lose people? Right?

Paul Harvey  8:17  
Yeah.

Frank Butler  8:18  
And I think that's a big part of it. Because other companies are paying more other companies are being more flexible. We did record an episode that discussed sort of that buyer's remorse now with people who have changed jobs. And that's interesting. But I think, again, it's, we're in this nascent stage of really adopting what technology is allowing us to adopt, which is more work from home or hybrid work or whatever. And it really, you know, again, I don't think the benefits of that can be overstated, you know, not having to commute to work every day. That timesaving that comes with that the the environmental benefits that can come from that.

Paul Harvey  8:55  
Just think about, like, if you're lucky enough to be working remotely at this moment, when gas prices in the US and much of the world have been rather high, to say the least, just not having to drive to work every day, that that's real money that you're saving, especially if you have a commute that's substantial.

Frank Butler  9:12  
Well, in thinking about on top of that, today, we've got inflation, you're not getting that raise the match inflation, as we've talked about before, too, you're kind of not getting a pay raise, you're not even being kept up. But now if you get to stay home, it's offsetting some of those costs.

Paul Harvey  9:25  
Good point. 

Frank Butler  9:26  
So while you might not be getting the 7% Raise, inflation adjusted raise, you might be saving those two 3% Just by not having to commute every day.

Paul Harvey  9:37  
Usually, if you have a long enough commute and you drive to work every day, it doesn't take a whole lot to to add up to 5, 6, 7 percent of your income, it's a good point.

Frank Butler  9:46  
So that you know, again, thinking about that notion that it's a good thing to consider change. And as a manager, it's your job to embrace it at the end of the day. And I know too many managers who are afraid of change because they don't know what that means. for their job, they don't know what that means for their people. And it's hard to do, I mean, change is really hard. One of the basic exercises that we could do at home just to kind of get an idea of what change in the difficulty of changes, like, just pick up a pen, and sign your name. Now alternate the hand and sign your name, put the pen down, pick up the pen and sign your name. I guarantee you, almost every single one of you, if you actually did that exercise would pick up the pen with your dominant hand, the hand that you write with, and signed your name that that third time, with that hand, not trying to practice with the new hand.

Paul Harvey  10:40  
You know, an example I like to use with students, on a similar kind of vein is about two thirds into the semester. So kind of like where we're at right now, in a semester, I'll say, there were think back to that first day class. Remember, we did this or that or the other thing to remember where you're sitting? How many of you have moved, you know, one seat in any direction from where you sat that very first day. And you know, you might get a couple of hands. But for the most part…

Frank Butler  11:06  
Nobody's moved, right? They're all…

Paul Harvey  11:08  
All in the same places that you arbitrarily picked that first day. And like, if you came into class one day, and someone who's sitting in that seat of yours, it'd be weird. You'd be like, probably wouldn't like get a saying anything. But you'd have to like…adjust, and it would be uncomfortable, like, Oh, my seat has been taken.

Frank Butler  11:23  
What's funny is that you wouldn't say anything, most likely. But you know, in their mind, they're thinking, oh, yeah, should I say something to them? I mean, you know, you're asking yourself that, what should I say something that's my seat, but then you realize it's not...

Paul Harvey  11:34  
Not a stressful thing. 

Frank Butler  11:36  
It really is. I mean, I understand that. So, you know, that's one of those ideas that change is hard, even on the most minut little things. And that's why it's one of those things. That manager's job is as we go back. And we had that interview where Kurt to for a while ago, you got to lead people and manage things. And you can manage the tools that are used to help with brainstorming in a remote environment or in our team that works in different ways or what have you. You can leverage the tools and manage the things, the processes, but you have to lead people…

Paul Harvey  12:16  
Keep in mind, those tools are improving at a rapid clip, as mentioned in the Asana report, like there's a huge market has just blown up in this for software and hardware, anything that can make virtual remote work, and collaboration and brainstorming more feasible. So, you know, even compared to where we were two years ago, but I'm sure two years from now we're gonna have stuff that's, you know, we can't even imagine just yet. So even if there's there's still friction points today, they're going away pretty quickly. 

Frank Butler  12:44  
Right. And so it's good to get in there early to learn about them. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to adopt them out the gate,

Paul Harvey  12:52  
Doesn't mean you need to do that Metaverse stuff, because that's just scary as hell.

Frank Butler  12:56  
Yes, you know, doesn't mean any of that. But there are certain things that are out there that are well vetted at this point that work well. And, you know, that's the thing. I, I think, Paul and I will agree on this statement. And that is to not reinvent the wheel. What works works. If you have to take something somebody else does take it, there's nothing wrong with that. Use it. There's a reason why sometimes

Paul Harvey  13:23  
By force if necessary.

Frank Butler  13:25  
Claim your dominance over it. It's yours now.

Paul Harvey  13:33  
That's how you demonstrate power.

Frank Butler  13:35  
Exactly. Well, you know, and again, kind of I don't, I don't want to rehash too many of the details of things that we've discussed in the past. But Paul and I have been very clear that we think that today's environment is the best way to adopt to new techniques to help really appeal to a wide array of potential workers that are going to help bring value to your company. And the better you are at being able to adapt to those needs, the better off your company is going to be long term. And the more you can help your managers along with that if you're you know, senior level or senior level executive…

Paul Harvey  14:12  
And even if you're not, you know, how many times have you heard or seen or been involved with, you know, just some, you know, frontline some employee who's not like an executive or anything, showing their boss Oh, hey, you know, there's this cool app you can use, and that would make this a lot easier to do blah, blah, blah thing remotely. And they say, Oh my God, that's really cool. I'm going to try that. I've noticed at least anecdotally, a lot of that kind of upward. Just people who happen to me, the more tech savvy employees find themselves in positions of influence all of a sudden, because they can figure out more efficient ways to do things with flexibility and remote work built in that not every manager is aware of.

Frank Butler  14:48  
And that's just it right? Not every manager is aware of it. And again, this is where the faster you can learn about some of these things and to connect with others. Or even if trade associations or organizational associations or whatever it Is that your, your company blogs, have these kind of workshops or demonstrations or work with your local university, or organization that does this.

Paul Harvey  15:08  
Your favorite podcast

Frank Butler  15:09  
Yeah, your favorite podcast, you know.

Paul Harvey  15:11  
Send us an email, we'd be happy to...

Frank Butler  15:13  
Work with you 

Paul Harvey  15:14  
Help you figure out solutions or put you in touch with somebody you can. And you mentioned Frank, the Society of Human Resource Management, SHRM. That's a good resource for, for most companies, I think to be at least kept abreast of is a lot of this stuff there. They're not just throwing everything out there. It's not like, you know, tech news, like, Ooh, look at this is more of a research based approach that, you know, we're finding evidence that this approach to this kind of remote situation seems to work better than that one, that kind of thing. We'll put a link in the show notes.

Frank Butler  15:44  
I think SHRM is an outstanding organization as a whole, that's very logical in how they approach these types of things. They, they don't try to what's the word I'm looking for? They don't try to sensationalize it, they tried to bring more of that best practices approach that evidence based approach in a lot of cases.

Paul Harvey  16:05  
Nice thing about them is that they're composed of both academic researchers as well as corporate consulting professionals. So you got the two sides to kind of keep each other in check. Yeah, so going off the deep end.

Frank Butler  16:18  
So coming back, now from SHRM to this anatomy...to this Asana study, and looking at work and talking about sort of the the challenges that pandemic have brought on, one of the things that we've seen here is that, again, many more people are working remotely or working from home. And there is a transition going on. And companies are trying to get more hybrid type flex work environments, what have you. But what's interesting about one of the things that they had in their study was they broke down the the anatomy of basically, the work that a person does, and this is this is focusing on knowledge workers. And one of the things that was really interesting about this is that they broke it down into three blocks work about work, which is, as they call it, activities, such as communicating about work. So email, right, which is a favorite topic of falls, searching for information. So that's kind of like a research thing, but not necessarily a good research type thing. 

Paul Harvey  17:15  
That's not like doing research for your skilled job, this is how to do this or who has that information.

Frank Butler  17:21  
Right. It's not it's not the skilled stuff. It's truly generic. Switching between applications, or apps, as they call it, managing shifting priorities, and chasing status updates. And they said that in 2021, in the US, it was 61%. For work about work. 24% of that are before I get to that, and then in 2022 is 58%. That was for the US. Globally, it was 60% for work about work, and 58% and 2022. So again, very similar numbers between the globe in the US and this in this piece here. Now the next one was skilled work labor that...

Paul Harvey  18:03  
Just want to tell them who had the lowest percentage of work about work of this of the countries included in the report? Just to give props to the country that came out with the least amount of busy work, basically last year,

Frank Butler  18:18  
I think that was Germany, wasn't it?

Paul Harvey  18:19  
It was Germany, still at 53%. I mean, that's a lot of work about work. But still, at least they got 47%, almost half of the time, their days spent on real work. That's cool.

Frank Butler  18:31  
Right. And that's, and that is really cool. And I think that's a it's an important distinction there to talk about two, which is why we have sort of the US focus version of this and a global version of this, because it's it is important to tease out some of these distinctions and talk about what we might know about it. The next one is called skilled work. And skilled work is labor that requires specific knowledge or expertise. So again, this is knowledge workers, I'm guessing this is like if you're a programmer, or you know, there's lots of knowledge based work out there, you could be an expert consultant, these kinds of things. That's now the skill of work leveraging your expertise. And in 2021, it was 24% was focused in on that facet. Now 2022. For you, the US, yes, for the US. Thank you. And in 2022, it's up to 33%. So I think, you know, you look at 2021, it was probably a an adjustment year still. And now we're settling in more so with 2022 Getting more work back into sort of people's skill sets.

Paul Harvey  19:30  
And I would love to see this number going forward in the years ahead and see if it's, I don't know if they break it down by workplaces that are that go back to fully in the office, those that are remote, those that are hybrid, it'd be interesting to see if there's a noticeable split between the different what's the word more modalities?

Frank Butler  19:53  
Right, right. That's yeah, I think that would be very interesting to Now I do want to go into since we talked about Germany, having In the the lowest about work about work, meant to end mention that Singapore had the highest amount of work about work at 69%.

Paul Harvey  20:08  
I'm sure most of the Asian countries are in the higher end of the list. 

Frank Butler  20:12  
It's actually interesting. Japan's 61%, which is tied with the UK, Australia is at 59%. Two. So I mean, we're talking about it's very close ranges, but Singapore is like seriously outsized. Now for the skilled work, though, Singapore is the lowest at 21%. Germany is the highest 40%. So, again, much better the US is at 33%. But that's that's pretty interesting facet to think about is that there are global differences. You're right, Asia Pacific, probably in general, if they included other countries there, from those regions...

Paul Harvey  20:48  
The culture there, the emphasis on formality and context is so much higher that you know, you, you tend to see that over there. 

Frank Butler  20:55  
That's correct. 

Paul Harvey  20:56  
It's an important, you know, it's a means of communication of, you know, what, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, you gotta get approval from somebody to do something who doesn't technically need to provide it, but you do so as a sign of respect, like that kind of thing?

Frank Butler  21:09  
Right? It's just respecting the hierarchy, those kinds of things, right, respecting the chain of command, maybe. But there is a lot of, I would say, respect along among those who are more senior, right. It's not even like they're necessarily chain of command, but it is about...

Paul Harvey  21:25  
Right, not chain of command but you know, the face saving…

Frank Butler  21:30  
Yeah

Paul Harvey  21:28  
…Kind of…

Frank Butler  21:39  
Yes, that's it

Paul Harvey  21:39  
…aspect…

Frank Butler  21:43  
Face saving 

Paul Harvey  21:31  
…which is a constructive aspect of Asian culture. But it does. Most people I know, who have worked extensively in Asia, including Asian people will say like, it's a trade off, like there's benefits. But yeah, you do spend a lot of time getting signatures and going through the motions. So it is what it is.

Frank Butler  21:50  
It is what it is. Now, this last one is strategic work, a plan of action designed to achieve a major goal. Now in the US in 2021, the anatomy works as 15% and 2022, it's 9%, I think.

Paul Harvey  22:05  
Interesting. 

Frank Butler  22:06  
I think a lot of this might be coming down to the major goals were how do we work better in a remote environment maybe, or in a new environment, or navigating COVID. So they had clear strategic goals at play. And now that they're settling in, they're getting to put more of that effort back to the skilled work that that stuff they were hired to do. And that's a good boy, that's just my general sort of assumption, I guess. And…

Paul Harvey  22:28  
I was kind of thinking more in terms of like, a bit of a bounce back effect, where like 2020 or like, first year of the pandemic, there was like constant strategic work in terms of like, how the hell are we going to do this? And then once things kind of finally started getting sort of settled in, like, okay, let's just not have like a meeting for two months, because I'm done with you. But I think your theory is probably more apt, we need to find previous year reports and see what those numbers have looked like over the past decade to see if we can tease something out. We'll get back to you all on that.

Frank Butler  23:01  
Absolutely. Now, just to kind of go look at the strategic work category, the lowest is France at 6%. And the highest is actually tied to Japan, and Singapore, at 10%. The US is at nine UK seven, Germany at 7%, Australia at 8%. So I think that's pretty interesting that Germany and the UK and France are at the lower end of that strategic work. And I think maybe culturally, or maybe there's something about distance, because a lot of these people don't necessarily live as far from their work. In some case, I don't know this isn't this one's an interesting, maybe they're just had ahead of the curve, because he got hit so hard first, and they were already…

Paul Harvey  23:39  
I just wonder, is this a real difference? Or is it...we're talking about span from 6% to 10%. This might just be, like...noise. 

Frank Butler  23:48  
True

Paul Harvey  23:48  
It seems like this is something that's pretty consistent. True. Basically, we can safely say that five to 10% of employees workday is spent on strategic planning activities. And that seems to hold for a lot of countries.

Frank Butler  24:00  
So here's the big thing kind of going now off of this breakdown and talking about the work about work category. This is where Paul and I will really claim is the busyness category at the end of the day because it is heavily busyness. Some of its necessary, but in this case.

Paul Harvey  24:00  
Some of it’s necessary.

Frank Butler  24:17  
Right that in this case, when we when we break it down, they broke it down and saying that over one year, the average worker is spending 129 hours on duplicate work. They're spending 129 hours in unnecessary meetings. Ain't that the truth, goodness. They say that 257 hours in a year could be saved with improved processes.

Paul Harvey  24:39  
257 hours 

Frank Butler  24:41  
That's a big number. But you know what would happen with that? Oh, we've improved processes. Now let's fill the rest of that time with some more busy work. Unnecessary meetings.

Paul Harvey  24:41  
Right. Backfill it with busywork.

Frank Butler  24:51  
It was funny, I was having a conversation. I think maybe it was yesterday about this very thing actually. No, it was yesterday we were talking about how how much product here At these devices have given us an we're talking specifically about the smartphone and sort of how it's become a necessary evil in a lot of cases and the get one guy said he's like, It's kept me from needing an administrative assistant, which I thought was an interesting statement to make. But at the same time, it's it's also created a lot more work for people. So while we're much more productive, and we don't need that role that we once did, it's now also created a lot more backfill of time, that's not necessarily ideal. And he was talking about managing, like 20 different emails and stuff like that. And it's just like, holy goodness.

Paul Harvey  25:36  
That's what we were getting into way back with the efficiency paradox episode. Yep. And the email episodes, from an efficiency standpoint, yeah, there's a whole lot less administrative support needed in the modern organization, because everyone can do their own emails and their own spreadsheets and data. But that means now you have to do all those things yourself. So instead of having everybody with an army of assistants and everything, you calculate your own spreadsheets, you do your own emails, you do all that administrative work, isn't really net by itself, good or bad thing, it just kind of is the way it is. But it's that efficiency paradox that when you hit a point that a process become so efficient, it doesn't make some make sense to have someone else do it for you. And you do it yourself. That's right. And so you're doing more work.

Frank Butler  26:21  
That's right. And that doesn't include the bureaucratic shifts that we talked about, and BS jobs and those kinds of things. So this is where we're going to kind of break this one down at this point is for those of you who are managers who believe that everybody should be back face to face, that's fine. That's your prerogative isn't it's your choice, we don't want to tell you that you can't have that.

Paul Harvey  26:40  
And in some certain circumstances, it is the right decision. 

Frank Butler  26:43  
Exactly. We do want to at least warn people that are doing this when they doesn't need to be done. I mean, it's one thing to come up with flex time, maybe having an overlapping day where everybody's in the office, something like that. But giving people that flexibility, thinking about the idea of the inflation, the cost savings, even thinking about the work environment itself. And I think this is again, something Paul and I have said over and over. This is an opportune time to rethink the way you work. And the way you have your people do work.

Paul Harvey  27:14  
It is THE opportune time

Frank Butler  27:15  
It is the opportune time 

Paul Harvey  27:16  
There will not be a better time in your lifetime

Frank Butler  27:19  
Right. And think about the anatomy of work. It's actually costing you money, to have people dealing with all this work about work stuff when they're not leveraging their skill sets. And it makes them unhappy because that's what they got into this world to do manage their skill sets, right, leverage their skills, develop their skills, grow their skills,

Paul Harvey  27:35  
No one came into the working world to be a professional emailer. No one went to college, to get a degree in something to be a professional meeting sitter-in-er...onner.

Frank Butler  27:45  
And just real quick, I want to plug this in, because you're right, and this is what it comes back to. Because of corporate complexity as a as they put this, they looked at what causes miss deadlines. 24% of missed deadlines are caused by too many meetings 22% over uncertain priorities and 23% over unclear processes. Structure it’s a structure

Paul Harvey  28:08  
Structure, yup

Frank Butler  28:09  
Get the scope right, get the structure, go manage things, manage things, those are the management things, lead the people by taking away these kinds of things that eat up their time, that make them track down things or to duplicate work, or spend too much time in unnecessary meetings, just focus on being a little bit more streamlined. And take a project management class, come take a project management class from me, and we'll help you out with that. So just putting a plug,

Paul Harvey  28:36  
I'm sure there's like Khan Academy, what's it called? The 

Frank Butler  28:39  
Oh, yeah, 

Paul Harvey  28:40  
online,

Frank Butler  28:40  
Khan Academy might have one. Yeah, for sure.

Paul Harvey  28:43  
There's resources. The point we're trying to make and all this is that there's a lot of fat to be trimmed in terms of efficiency. And if you're blaming the fact that employees don't want to go back to the office for your efficiency, woes, almost certainly, that's low on the list compared to other things that you could be doing to improve efficiency to decrease time, waste, burnout, all that stuff, all that stuff. 270 hours a year spent. Well, that was definitely us 270 hours a year could be saved, if processes were improved versus 257. globally. So big numbers everywhere, especially in the US.

Frank Butler  29:18  
And think about you as a manager, that's, that stresses you out, because a lot of these things fall on you. So again, this is why it matters. Lead people manage things, manage the processes, get out of people's way, help them get more efficient, so they can do what they got into the job in the first place and try to minimize that busywork.

Paul Harvey  29:38  
Often that means just getting out of the way. Don't keep 

Frank Butler  29:41  
Yes, 

Paul Harvey  29:41  
Don't keep dumping busy work or allow others to dump busy work on your people

Frank Butler  29:47  
And don't micromanage, have them tell you what they need. Find out from your people what they need, because every team might be different or whatever it is. So broadly speaking, be flexible, be flexible with how people work, and try to lead them by actually getting stuff out of their way, be much more structured.

Paul Harvey  30:04  
Be more structured, in a very flexible way. Good day.

Frank Butler  30:07  
I think the flexible is that you have to create structure and you got to let them go and work from home or do all that. But then you have to have structure on it if they aren't doing that, and then have the meeting structured in a way that you get things actually accomplished, you know, at 500 meetings that just run over the same thing. And you don't accomplish anything.

Paul Harvey  30:22  
Not to keep plugging our own past episodes. But one of our years structure episodes touched on that. The irony, the paradox of structure is that you're taking away a degree of flexibility in some regards, to gain a lot of flexibility in other regards, right? You want to structure basically, the busy work to put limits on it, to make sure what's being done is the value add stuff, and constraints that keeps it in the box, so that the rest of the rest of the time, employees are free to do actual productive value adding money earning things.

Frank Butler  30:54  
Exactly, exactly. So with that, with that, we're going to we're going to keep biting off of this down the road, we're going to tee some things out. But I think broadly, this aligns perfectly with sort of the things we try to say, we're always happy to help out. So feel free to reach out to us. Be sure you know, like, subscribe to our podcast, share it with those who you think should be listening to it. We would love to have more people hearing our message or you know, reach out to us and we'll have a conversation about it. We will happily have a time to talk about this with you. You know, that's what we're here for. We're here to help. And with that, I do have to go to a meeting.

Paul Harvey  31:29  
I actually don't so for once I'm going to be hopefully doing something skilled and productive.

Frank Butler  31:35  
Unproductive. I was hoping unproductive. 

Paul Harvey  31:38  
That's probably what's gonna happen. Let's be honest.

Frank Butler  31:40  
Helping your mind you know, recoup yourself and reset. Alright, everybody, thanks for listening. We love hearing from you. We appreciate your listening. Again. We've been blown away by the global aspect of our audience. We love it.

Paul Harvey  31:53  
Good day. The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from "It's Business Time" by Jemaine Clements and Bret McKenzie. Our production manager is Justin Wuntaek. We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and we'd love to hear from you. Please send any questions, comments or ideas for future episode topics to input@busynessparadox.com, or find us on Twitter. Also, be sure to visit our website, busynessparadox.com, to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show. Finally, please take a moment to rate and follow or subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts or...I don't know, wherever the heck you get your podcasts.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai