Your task for today is doing more with less

By Stefan Stern

Published: February 1 2010 22:11 | Last updated: February 1 2010 22:11

If only more people could live up to the standards set by the new Nokia N900 handset. You may have seen one of the adverts for the Nokia N900. A picture of the smart black device is supported by the one-word slogan (and neologism): “Multimultitasking”.

In 2010 we need all the multimultitaskers we can get. Headcount has been reduced in many workplaces, and there is only limited (if any) rehiring going on. People are being stretched. Whether in the public or private sectors, we all have to do more with less.

I predict that “more with less” is going to become the key management mantra of the decade. But as with most of these buzzwords or phrases, the simplicity of the language conceals the difficulty of making it happen. Worse, there are dangers for those who enthusiastically adopt the mantra without thinking through all the possible consequences.

Some managers might have hoped that the start of the new year, with its incipient recovery, would mean that the worst was behind them. But leading a business in slightly better times with limited resources will be just as hard as the period of retrenchment that preceded it.

Large parts of the workforce, while relieved at still having a job, will be worried about the future. Trying to get higher productivity from anxious colleagues is not easy.

And it is not as though traditional “performance management” is being carried out well in the first place. The annual management survey conducted by the UK’s Roffey Park, a management institute, published last month, showed that the number of managers who felt that their organisation handled performance badly has more than doubled in the last year. Recession has tested some basic management skills – and found them wanting.

The response to this among employees is clear, to judge from the large number of workplace attitude surveys that have appeared recently. In the US, Right Management, an HR consultancy, reported that many workers are unhappy with their present jobs, with 60 per cent intending to leave and another 25 per cent actively networking and updating their CVs.

In the UK, job satisfaction has fallen to record lows, according to research published last week by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

But feeling sorry for ourselves is not an option. Customers want and demand more. Businesses have to provide it. How can managers achieve this?

Employees cannot be battered into producing more. They have to be persuaded. That persuasion can be forceful and urgent. But it will also have to make sense. So managers need to be able to tell a convincing story about the future.

Then there is the need for technology taming. Of course new technology makes a lot of things possible: new ways of working, and a chance, genuinely, to do more with less. But new technology can also be, as Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired magazine, pointed out recently, an unruly child. “Technology ... has its own agenda,” he said. “[It] can deliver tremendous benefits to us, but the downside is that it’s selfish.” As with children, boundaries have to be set. We are supposed to be in charge of technology, not the other way round. Many of us can achieve more with less, but not if we are “always on”, 24 hours a day.

What if, in our anxiety to drive the business harder, we end up destroying the quality of what we do? It is a real risk. Budgets cannot be cut or frozen indefinitely without there being an impact on the organisation. “More with less” may not mean doing more of everything. It may also mean choosing which things we have to stop doing altogether.

Only last week Toyota, that former paragon of quality, was forced into announcing humiliating product recalls, a sure sign that even the best companies cannot push harder and harder without something going wrong. With glorious symbolism, Toyota’s problem turned out to be a faulty accelerator pedal. It shows that business leaders cannot just “step on it” unthinkingly.

In the end, though, there is not really much choice about this. In the 21st century we will have to work smarter and harder. That means efficiency savings and increased productivity. It is the great management challenge of the age.

“So much to do, so little time,” a Facebook friend complained on her updated page the other day. She soon received some helpful advice from her social network. “Get off Facebook then,” someone responded, almost immediately.

For more on management, visit www.ft.com/managementblog
stefan.stern@ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.