Guest Author - Sharlene Thomas

No one is fooled by “busy” work and the intelligent boss will know what’s important to their own business success. Those employers who insist on work being done because that’s the way it’s always been done, without considering how other duties have increased along with sales, not only overwhelm their employees, they discover the bane of most poorly-run businesses – constant employee turnover.

We’ve all heard the story of the six monkeys in a cage. For those of you who haven’t, let me paraphrase:

Some time ago, scientists placed six monkeys in a cage with a pedestal, stepladder, and a hand of bananas suspended just out of reach from the top of the pedestal.

Very soon, the monkeys learned to place the stepladder on the pedestal to reach the bananas. But, as soon as the bananas were touched, a thousand volts of electricity coursed through the first monkey, the second monkey, the third. . .

Monkeys, like people, hate electricity coursing through their bodies! By the end of the day, nothing could induce those monkeys to go after those bananas. They had learned to leave the bananas alone.

Within a week or so, a new monkey was placed in the cage and an old one removed. The new monkey saw the bananas, put the stepladder on the pedestal, and began climbing. The other monkeys began screaming and immediately pulled him down, refusing to let him go after the bananas. The new monkey learned that the bananas were -– taboo.

As all original monkeys were replaced, each new monkey learned to leave the bananas alone and, eventually, all the monkeys were replacements. Even though the electric current had been turned off, all the replacement monkeys obeyed the tribal law and left the bananas alone, but none of them knew why. Not one of them had ever experienced a thousand volts of electricity coursing through his body.

In their minds, it was “company policy,” TTWWADI, “That’s the way we’ve always done it!”

Some Examples of TTWWADI

And, that’s the way it is still going on in countless businesses across the country. Here are a few "busy" work examples I’ve encountered through my consulting work:

Scenario One: Repetitive reports to the same manager.
1. Each department was required to send the division manager the same report! Each report was identified by a department code number.
2. Each department had to sign off on the first report.

When asked the purpose of the redundant procedure, the manager said it was company policy and, although he didn’t know the reason, he was sure it was a good one!

I suggested they code the report, itself, and use that code for sign off in each department’s end-of-month summary sheet, as seen.

Scenario Two: For multiple invoice payments from the same vendor, the Accounts Receivable person:
1. Copied the two-part check to attach to each invoice.
2. Wrote the same check stub breakdown onto each invoice.
3. Keyed the information into the customer’s computer account.
4. Stapled the invoices and check copies together for filing.

In a very successful business receiving 30-40 checks a day, this A/R person had no choice but to copy the checks, key in the payment, and create a deposit slip to go with the checks for deposit that day. All the invoice bundles were added to a stack set aside until other “busy” work was completed.

This was redundancy beyond belief. No wonder the A/R person was exhausted and felt overwhelmed at the end of each day. The pile of invoices needing the handwritten notes would be waiting the next day.

Why was this redundancy company policy? Simple. Because the first person holding the job had no bookkeeping experience and needed that assurance of multiple entries. Anyone hired for that position was taught the same process "for consistency." A true case of TTWWADI.

Cleaning Up Redundancy in Your Business

Go through all your office tasks and remove repetitive steps. It’s a waste of personnel time and paper. Remove tasks that salve insecurities and only do those actually required to preserve your business records.

You really don't need multiple copies of the same information. One hard copy in a file drawer and the original saved to disk is more than enough. Sharing highlights in meetings will keep personnel informed. The benefits are two-fold, your employees look forward to a future with you and you'll gain hours of extra time to enjoy your business!