Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow

by Dominica Degrandis

The solution is to design and use a workflow system that does the following five things: Make work visible. Limit work-in-progress (WIP). Measure and manage the flow of work. Prioritize effectively (this one may be a challenge, but stay with me—I’ll show you how). Make adjustments based on learnings from feedback and metrics.

There are five other main reasons people give when I ask them, “Why do you take on more work than you have the capacity to do?” We are team players—“I don’t want to be the person who lets the team down.” We fear humiliation—“I don’t want to be criticized or fired.” Yes is easier to say than no—especially to the boss. Refusing a manager’s request can be risky in some cultures. We like new and shiny—It’s much more fun than doing the grunt work it takes to finish something complicated and unglamorous. We don’t realize how big the request is until we start working on it—“Oh, no problem. I can get that done in just a couple of hours,” but the task takes much longer. We like to please people.—“I say yes to most requests in general because I want to be liked, admired, respected. “

This is the problem with unplanned work—it sets back planned work. It increases uncertainty in the system and makes the system less predictable as a result.