The Cost of Being Too Busy

There seems to be a common answer when you ask someone how things are going these days, the answer is usually “Busy.” And in many businesses, that’s mostly true.

There are more meetings, more emails, more messages and more ways for people to reach us than ever before. Decisions are expected faster, customers expect prompt responses and there is a constant flow of things that need attention.

Being busy has almost become a sign that business is going well. But I’m not sure the two are always the same thing.

When Did Busy Become a Measure of Success?

A full calendar doesn’t necessarily mean a productive week. A long list of projects doesn’t mean the right things are being worked on. And responding quickly to everything doesn’t always mean we’re giving enough thought to the things that really matter. This piece isn’t about slowing business down.

Quite the opposite.

Businesses need to move quickly, customers expect it, markets demand it and competitors certainly aren’t standing still. The challenge is making sure all that movement is actually taking us somewhere. We see this in customer relationships all the time.

It’s easy to become so focused on the next opportunity, proposal or deadline that we forget the value of simply understanding a customer’s business. What are they trying to achieve, what’s frustrating them, where are they spending time or money unnecessarily and what has changed in their business since the last time we spoke.

Those conversations don’t always result in an immediate sale. In fact, quite often they don’t. But over time, they’re usually the conversations that build the strongest relationships and the same applies inside a business.

Every organisation has projects, priorities and new ideas competing for attention. The temptation is to try to do all of them. That’s where being busy can become expensive.

Too many priorities usually means something gets less attention than it should, often resulting in projects taking longer, people becoming stretched, decisions get rushed and, eventually, customers can feel the impact.

Sometimes the better decision isn’t to add something new but rather to finish what we’ve already started, or to stop doing something that no longer makes sense. This sounds obvious, but in a world where growth is often associated with doing more, choosing to do less can be difficult.

There’s another side to this as well, some of the things that create the most value in business are difficult to measure. A good conversation with a customer, time spent developing someone in the business, fixing a problem properly instead of finding the quickest solution, taking a little longer on an important decision. None of these necessarily look impressive on a spreadsheet, but they matter, and that’s the point.

Being busy is easy to see, progress isn’t always as obvious, as businesses, we will always have targets to meet, customers to look after and deadlines that can’t move. There will always be periods where everyone simply has to put their heads down and get things done. That’s part of business. But every now and then, it’s worth asking a very simple question.

Are we busy because we’re moving forward, or are we just busy?

The difference might be more important than we think. 

by Ryan Ramawoothar