As it reports on the continuing Wall Street recovery, CNBC often cites the upbeat economic indicator of "increased worker productivity." It implies goodness, but is it? Is it in fact a short-term and potentially business-killing condition? Here are some of my concerns.
Product design and implementation will suffer because there's less time to simply think. New requirements, new designs and defining effective practices require time to step back, perform continuous research and get the attention of those around you to establish the support (and good critical thinking) you need.
Fewer people wearing more hats means less than 100% responsibility. How can you be in two or three roles at once and really feel like you are covering your territory? And what happens during crunch time, such as a product release, when all your responsibilities become #1? If you were once a person who took pride in your productivity, you find you are becoming an excuse-maker, not out of incompetence, but from feeling just plain overwhelmed.
Critical cross-training becomes an after-thought. Who has time to train people? Who has time to be trained? As essential as it may be, you feel like you're just ensuring that folks won't meet the deadlines they're already facing. Congratulations, that extra hat you've been wearing looks like it's found a permanent home.
Burn out will occur at a faster rate. It doesn't matter how much you love your work. When you're just keeping the ship afloat, there's not much time for the things that previously fueled your passion, such as vision-making or healthy research of new strategies and technologies.
Finally, there is no substitute for intuition or simply sensing that something isn't quite right. A few months later, you're kicking yourself for not having researched that gut feeling when you had it. Then you ask yourself, "why?" and all you can come up with is, "I was too busy being productive."