The business of busyness
Viewed purely as a sociological experiment, big companies are fascinating. You throw together thousands upon thousands of people—each bringing their own strengths and weaknesses, experience and naivete, neuroses and insecurities—and kinda see what happens.
In theory, this teeming mass figures out how to work together effectively and efficiently. Everyone has specific tasks as part of a vast machine, humming contentedly as products and services are furnished, customers satisfied, and revenue rolls in. This is, of course, the ideal world.
The reality very, very, very different. Fiefdoms spring up. Managers measure their worth by the size of their teams. Cooperation is grudging, undermined by political agendas and petty grievances. HR keeps rebranding (“talent,” “people operations”) to smear Vaseline over the lens of the fact it remains what it’s always been: the function facilitating hiring and firing. Senior leaders talk about the critical role a company’s workforce plays (“nothing’s possible without them!”), only to jettison 20% of employees the minute markets get jittery. It’s all very odd and depressing if you think about it for too long.
Which is probably why most avoid thinking about it for long by doing … well, I’m not sure. What I do know is when you start with a huge organization where no one is truly certain what others do, add a heavy dollop of deep insecurity, a dash of desire to be “collaborative,” and two cups of defining your very existence by your job title, you get … busyness.
The business of busyness has nothing to do with actual work, at least as traditionally defined. Its objective is to create the illusion of work by being perpetually in meetings, on email chains, and writing emails largely around the agendas for said meetings and summaries of what took place working through those agendas. Here’s a tip: the outcome of almost all meetings is a commitment to hold another meeting (or “reconvene”).
This presents a problem for those of us who figure people are fundamentally good at what they do, understand their role better than anyone else, and should therefore be left alone to do what they do best. I largely regard a manager’s critical role as two-fold: to “manage” as little as possible, and to ensure their team isn’t distracted by being in meetings they don’t need to be in or on email chains they don’t need to be on.
You can see how this inevitably ends. People crave being in meetings they don’t need to be in and email chains they don’t need to be on not only because they’re insecure with severe FOMO, but because this is what they define as work. When you limit meetings or emails only to those who are actually needed, you’re not sparing people from being distracted from their work—you’re eliminating their work. Nonstop meetings was their whole day. What the hell will they do now?
This busyness syndrome has intensified through and after COVID. The shift to remote work eliminated much of the personal interaction that traditionally facilitated camaraderie and a sense of deeper connection, simultaneously intensifying the sense of being disconnected and standing on shaky ground. Zoom calls give the illusion both of being busy and connected, so they get stacked back to back to back to back. It’s now at a point where 25 minutes or 55 minutes has become the default meeting length, just to ensure people have time to hit the bathroom and grab a coffee before the treadmill resumes.
Some of these issues aren’t eliminated by being at a smaller company, but most are definitely reduced. You can’t regularly have 20 people on a call—that’s half the organization. A smaller workforce means people can’t slip into narrow roles and man the battlements against all encroachment—everyone has to pitch in to get stuff done. And good luck thinking you can skate through your days and go unnoticed—ain’t gonna happen.
But what if you want to thrive at a big company? Here are two related stories. First, my tenure at mega-corporations was once described as “the body rejecting the organ”—I was bringing what companies needed and claimed to want, but the forces of institutional resistance and inertia just were too strong. Someone recently told me the problem for people trying to institute change was a company’s “antibodies” fight the infection, and that’s a perfect description.
Second, I’ve been told more than once and at more than one organization that the key to succeeding is to “reach the point of acceptance” (presumably after working through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression). That is, you have to get to a point where you are willing to work with the dysfunction rather than trying to improve or eliminate it. More bluntly, a super smart, super senior leader apologized to me for not setting me up for success with the resources I needed—resources we’d discussed in depth and agreed on prior to my joining the company. He then noted the deep resistance to change before ending with a sigh and a long pause. “Luke,” he finally said, “you’ve just got to stop pissing in the tent.”
So, if you want to succeed at a big company, reach a point where you stop railing about the insanity of how things are done or why there are infinitely better ways. Just accept the dysfunction. And if you’re not prepared to, there are plenty of smaller, dynamic companies where change is embraced and busyness means doing a ton of actual work. How about that for an industrial revolution?