Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

I find this law really interesting because of the many ways it impacts our lives. The idea that things will always find a way to fill the free space you give it makes sense when you think of ways we see this in our everyday lives such as:

  • The extra storage which seemed huge when you first bought your house is now full years later
  • Always needing more hard drive space
  • A simple task can takes weeks to get done if you give it weeks to get done

What’s more interesting to me though is how this applies to companies as well. I have seen this at multiple jobs and its impact can be devastating to your department if you are not aware it is happening. What typically happens is something like this:

  • Team A suddenly has a spike in the amount of work assigned to them, and it is important work
  • Team A tells Boss they need to hire more people to handle the workload and assumes this work will be there indefinitely
  • Boss knows how important this short term work is and agrees to hire help
  • 6 months later Team A now has excess capacity because the spike is gone
  • Team A now needs to find work to keep everyone busy so they start creating work that might not be the most impactful work
  • Typically this is work that Team A finds interesting and can justify some way or another as being important
  • Boss likes to see Team A busy so he doesnt question it too much

I have seen this happen countless times and its a great example of how your org can spiral out of control and end up doing a lot of busy work that might not be the most important work and soon Boss’s Boss will be asking why do we have so many people but we aren’t seeing a meaningful impact in the value we are adding.