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May 08, 2007
Busy and/or Bursty?
Adam Carson just alerted me to Anne Zelenka‘s sharp post characterizing ‘busy’ and ‘burst’ approaches to work. The former is characterized by a focus on being ‘in your place’ in all appropriate ways— at your desk during working hours, in your place on the org. chart, etc. The latter is characterized by an abiding lack of concern for one’s proper place and a great emphasis on fluidity— geographic, organizational, collaborative, etc. This fluidity, it is hoped, yields great bursts of productivity in response to needs as they arise.
Zelenka’s post and many of the comments in response to it acknowledged the need for both busy and burst, and the difficult necessity of finding a balance between the two within companies. I think this is a very important topic, and I look forward to hearing what others have to say about it. In particular, I’d love to hear about successful ‘balancing acts’ between the two that readers have instituted, participated in, or seen.
One interesting challenge that companies will face if and when they embrace burst-y approaches to organize work is how to measure and monitor it. Hardcore burst advocates would probably respond "Measure it based on results, and don’t bother trying to monitor it while it’s in process. To do otherwise reflects a lack of understanding of burst."
There are a couple problems with this response. First, the obvious danger of giving a bunch of bursters a job to do and a suite of E2.0 tools to do it with, then sitting back and waiting for the great output is that it might never come. This can be mitigated somewhat by paying them only on delivery, but this is not always feasible (it’s tough to do with employees) and isn’t that smart in situations where the output is critically important. Second, a philosophy of ‘we put smart people together, get out of their way, and don’t even try to stay on top of what they’re doing’ can be extremely dangerous. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out a while back in The New Yorker, this was almost exactly Enron’s explicit philosophy. Gladwell calls this the ‘Talent Myth.’
So it’s far from clear what’s the right mix of busy and burst, but it’s pretty clear that both extremes are far from optimal. Tell us what you think— where’s the happy medium, and how do we get to it from where we are now in our workplaces?
This discussion is part of the answer in that it helps organizations understand that they engage in two types of activities:
(a) Execution-oriented (busy), and
(b) Discovery-oriented (bursty)
The increasing rate of change in the business and the technological domains is simultaneously enabling and requiring greater agility in moving between these two types of activities. The traditional approach of organizationally segregating innovation (a Discovery activity)is often slower and less effective than an integrated approach. As you note, integration raises difficult issues. In addition to the measurement issue, these include:
(a) How do we know when to move from Execution to Discovery? (e.g., risk/opportunity mgt. framework)
(b) How do we know when to move from Discovery to Execution? (e.g., transition of legacy capabilities)
(c) How do organizational structures, processes, roles/responsibilities, etc. differ between the two modes?
(d) How do we staff to enable quick movement between the two modes?
No simple answers....but a better understanding of the question is an essential first step.
I would argue that “burst” is the default mode of work for humans, as flashes of creativity occur naturally. Busy, on the other hand, is imposed on us by the factory structure of school and work first instituted in the Industrial Revolution. We can only hope to have “enlightened” bosses who believe in the burst model.
As office co-workers get more advanced and more structured, there are more meetings, more tele-conferences, video meetings. Unknowingly, the job scope of any known person has probably increased by 3-4 folds over the last ten years.
Busy and burst approaches are just too hard to distinguish. While there are productivity tools like black berry that makes people more mobile, it has inherently increased ones responsibilities.
There will always be people acting busy, e.g. “Oh I’m on skype with a customer” when they might be probably spending their time watching a clip on YouTube. Probably their protest against the additional job scopes that was not indicated on their job appointment letters.
yea, though I dont understand this whole post, but i think it enough to be dynamic and productive than be stuck to traditions and discipline!
Two thoughts - 1) as more people work on virtual teams rather than traditional office settings the busy/burst issue becomes less of an issue because “face time” disappears. Instead companies will have “presence” to see whether people are online or not...and the nature of how an individual goes about his or her work becomes much less important.
2) As social computing tools become more prevalent in the enterprise, the business value of bursty will begin to be recognized largely because it is visible. Instead of “I’m working on the document and will get it to you next week for your review,” colleagues will converse, collaborate, co-create together and “managers” (or whoever might be interested) will be able to watch, moniter progress, and chime in as they wish. In the bursty world the hierarchical distinctions break down and leveraging different expertise and each individual’s actual contribution become much more important to getting to end game.
One other thought - quality standards and deadlines don’t disappear in the bursty world.
I.T. is affecting nearly every facet of human endeavor, and that effect is to speed up, to simplify the process of work, of innovation, of scientific exploration. Everything is speeding up, business is more open to public, everyone can be successful. For me, a student of computer science, the future is bright, even in country like Croatia.
Here is my thought: the busy need the burst and vice-versa.
A new company always began with burst because they need to be creative and test out a lot of functionality. As they master all the basic skills and understanding of each specific task, the busy slowly take over. Through time, the busy are required to maintain the business. However, the burst must also coexist with the busy in order to expand the business. A business with only the busy will slowly die down and though they may still exist, their business will only decline or if they are lucky, they might stay constant for a while.
Technologies are very important and it’s always up to the burst to keep up with each new creation. Most small businesses tend to fail over time because they fail to change their old ways and they usually witness defeat and then they start to wonder what happened? They are always busy with their daily work and they neglect adapting to the new ways to meet the demand. Whatever your business is, busy + burst is a must. Burst help expand the company and busy help maintain the expansion.
With the proliferation of technology and collaboration tools, it is inevitable that companies need to re-look into the ways they conduct business and work. Bursty or busy ? it all boils down to the deliverables. To be honest, I kinda like the idea of bursty as i’ve seen and am aware that some employees could be well “busy” while not really doing anything productive. I know there will be camps that might say bursty has its downside as well. Example would be how do you quantify whether an employee is really supposed to be doing what he is doing at a given point in time ? I think certain level of trust has to be given to companies who embraces bursty types.
I think IBM is one good example of allowing its staffs to work from anyway and focusing on its outcome. And i am sure they have balanced “bursty and busy” as well. At present, unfortunately, i have little examples that i can think of from the BIG blue.
This is an interesting discussion.
Most companies are going global nowadays and its inevitable that there could be members within a team from differing timezones. How do you justify a member in a team sitting in his own timezone from 8-5 while the others starts work in his own “8-5” ?
While there should be a balance between busy and bursty, i think companies should give credits to the deliverables instead of ‘clocking’ time - appearing ‘busy’. My team works virtually from differing timezones and there is no exact yardstick to measure our ‘busyness’ “
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