TEDnesday Talks: "How Too Many Rules At Work Keep You From Getting Things Done"

Three minutes and 18 seconds about how a business is like a team of Olympic relay runners. Okay then...

At Student Edge, we like to keep ourselves up to date with all the latest innovative ideas in the world of technology, education and design. We also love puns. So, over Wednesday lunch, we watch TED talks. Thus: TEDnesday.

This week, we watched BCG researcher Yves Morieux speak about how a focus on efficiency in an organisation can lead to uncooperative behaviours. (This was recorded in February of 2004.)

Check it out!

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Yves' key pitch is that productivity is amazing and it drives prosperity in a society, but in a modern age when work is more complex, the basic tenets of efficiency - clarity, measurement, accountability - have become counter-productive.

In his words:

• Clarity is bad because to attain clarity we must employ more descriptions, rules, documentation, meetings and managers. This only adds to the level of complexity, adding more processes. More work needs to be done to achieve less.
• Measurement is bad because it forces us to only focus on the work that can be measured rather than the work that necessarily creates value. It also means we focus on driving our own measurable work rather than helping others.
• Accountability is bad because it puts a focus on blame and prepares us for failure.

To summarise, Yves states that what we need to cooperate and to thrive is "fuzziness".

Yves' takes us on a journey through the state and the processes of modern organisations. It is one where everything we're doing is wrong and the problem is only worse, creating a horrible downward spiral of processes, reports, KPIs and measurements. The end product is employees who are uncooperative, under-motivated, overworked and unhappy.

The 'relay runners' metaphor was a confusing one, but our overall impression? While everything he's saying makes sense, this topic is bleak and kind of depressing and the solution provided at the end is something I think needs more clarity. This is a shame because although he doesn't elaborate on them, Yves makes some really interesting points about incentives.

"Don't blame the mindsets of people who don't cooperate," he says. Instead, look at their work situation and the way their environment and culture is shaping their behaviour. If people are incentivised by individual performance, why would they help other people? The systems that they work within are not designed to encourage this. "When people are blamed instead of poor work processes," Yves says, " we add injustice or ineffectiveness."

What structures do your employers put in place that encourage the wrong behaviour? How could these be improved?

Photo: TED.