Comments on: High leverage tasks vs. Low leverage tasks

By: Terrence

Terrence — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:56:02 +0000

Thanks for the thorough read and in-depth comment. I have written something that I should post that is directly targeted to you comment. Just a computer’s CPU should not be run for extended periods at 100%, neither should employees run at 100% for extended periods either. This is especially relevant, if any sort of creative output is expected.

By: Terrence

Terrence — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:39:21 +0000

Thanks for the careful read and thorough response. I have written another piece that perhaps I will post. It is aimed directly at one of your points. Just as it is very tough and not advisable to run a computer’s CPU at 100% for extended periods of time, it is not advisable to run people at 100% either. This is especially the case, if the employee is expected to be creative.

By: victor

victor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:08:00 +0000

But, low leverage tasks can facilitate time to incubate ideas and give an opportunity to reflect over my current high leverage work and relax for a moment. Being constantly on the edge and feeling pressure to be productive and doing \meaningful\ high leverage work will probably have an impeding effect on creativity and the efficiency. My experience as a student is that if I give myself time to reflect and vary high leverage work (solving statistical analysis problems) with low leverage work (doing the dishes) is optimal for my performance and I believe there is research that agrees with my observations. So like you mention, 8 hrs high leverage work is probably not achievable. There is a reason Google gives employees 20% of their time to work on their own projects (although this is probably considered high leverage work I believe what stimulates creativity and a positive work environment is when employees do high leverage work because they enjoy it rather than because it is a managerial goal). But my interpretation here might be a bit off focus, and I surely agree that delegation, redesign and outsourcing could be applied to many firms to improve the value creation and efficiency of certain tasks; especially in the public sector here in Sweden where MD’s spend plenty of expensive tax funded hours on administrative tasks…