One of the most interesting things about practicing management today is seeing so many counter-intuitive approaches do so inexplicably well, and speculating about why that may be. A classic is the neat desk/messy desk debate. A recent book review in the WSJ takes on this issue in an engaging way. In discussing a book that describes the surprising ways messy desks can actually act as organizers and promote effective prioritization, the reviewer makes the intriguing observation that, “The sloppy desk liberates the desk owner to focus on more important things.”
That’s not a bad thought, really. Much that is found in many of the time and work-habit management initiatives (including the neat-desk/neat mind school) is genuinely helpful. But much isn’t. Mindless attention to creating and ticking off meaningless checklists or maintaining a ritualistic control over the landscape of your desk often is used to create the impression of forward motion while hiding the reality of its absence. Its value is confused and overestimated by managers and workers alike, leading to mistaking form for function.
Those who focus on the highest priority issues (and who, importantly, ignore the rest) can appear to be less efficient or organized than others, whereas they actually are making more progress on those things that have more meaning for the firm. Rather than letting a mass of unimportant detail pull them under, they happily jettison it and manage to keep themselves and key initiatives afloat. Freed of the distracting demands of this detritus, they can often (or appear to) develop more creative solutions to the central issues that are key to making the tangential ones suddenly go away.
But there is, as in everything, a danger of going too far. Getting overly enamored of any apparently new, engaging idea runs the risk of once again misplacing form and function. At bottom, the issue isn’t how you do something, but whether your doing it effectively addresses the purpose for which you do it. So, whatever else you do, do be sure to dot those “i’s and cross those “t’s.”
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