Weblog

Apr 19, 05:40 pm: Busy, busy, busy.

Not just with the stuff of life but with the stuff of work too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens when we get busy – about the differences between capacity and scale and we often don’t get that or don’t integrate it into our work in way that allows us to logically extend what we are doing.

I’m still thinking about it and am wrestling with this idea – capacity and scale. I don’t even know what I think about it yet. But that’s not going to stop me from trying to figure out aloud. Here. And the “we” I’m talking about is not royal. It’s my experience at the old HQ.

So, often, when we run into “we’re too busy” issues we start talking about our capacity. Our bandwidth. And what we mean there is that we need more people. And so we throw more people at the problem. And we quickly run into the same wall – either in another point in the work process – or in just a a few months. And we starting lamenting the fact that we don’t have more people all over again.

And the reason is that we don’t actually need more capacity. We have plenty of capacity. What we need is scale. That is, we need to figure out ways to extend our existing capacity. But scale is a lot harder to build. It’s not just about finding skills or more hours or more people. It’s about setting up systems that are more than you need right now.

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Marnie Webb  | 

Comments made

  1. Ed

    Marnie – dude, you have so much going on. 1 or 2 are seriously relevant. All are necessary. Plates on sticks.

    Plates on sticks makes me think of GTD while the 43folders links suggest an angle previously researched.

    Scale – to scale is human, or at least group-wise. what we need is a flickr for GTD for groups.

    Guilty for commenting beyond baseline support.

    Later,

    Ed


    Apr 20, 03:40 am