Productivity in management? Well, yes, that's what executives want anyway. They are pushing their middle managers to be ever busier loading them with procedural nightmares and thinking their project, operations, construction and whatever else managers are productive if they live at least 12-hour work days running around like headless chicken. The consequences are hardly believable and although terribly obvious nobody dares to challenge the 'work hard' madness.
What's wrong with an 8-hour work day? You think it is not possible to live an 8-hour day because you wouldn't be able to complete everything? Well, guess what, you are overworked and potentially inefficient. Yes, there are people around us that can complete everything necessary in 8 hours while others would need at least 50% more time to achieve the same. But much more dangerously, being overworked dramatically reduces your efficiency and even though you might be a mean efficient machine in your normal life work overload will turn you into an inefficient headless chicken, let alone the suffering your family will be exposed on a daily basis. You will be running around firefighting, infinitely and tirelessly trying to tie up lose ends thinking how damn good you are, perhaps even feeling sorry for yourself. Sounds familiar? I bet it does because this is what construction professionals call 'normality'.
The problem is that 'construction normality' is utterly abnormal leading to a vicious circle of ever more firefighting reducing you to a monster chicken just like those Jamie Oliver was showing in his shows. So, all in all, life is good no matter the suffering because hard work is what we should do, right? Well, no! Nothing wrong with hard work, don't take me wrong but it is wrong that construction professionals are overworked. They should be ruthless efficient machines within an 8-hour work day but it is unreasonable to expect the same ruthlessness within a 12, 14 or even 16-hour day. Sorry, that's inefficient, period.
Imagine being a project manager and having a whole month or even more to evaluate your past project before being assigned to a new job, imagine being responsible for just one project at a time and imagine having an 8-hour day with no exception. Utopia? No, that is real and smart efficiency but it is far more difficult to overthrow the status quo we're trapped in now.
