MacGougan at Large

Notes on Laws That Aren't Really Laws

Parkinson’s Law - Organizational Inefficiency

C. Northcote Parkinson was a naval historian who wrote a humorous essay for the Economist magazine in 1955 that he later expanded into a book, Parkinson’s Law, The Pursuit of Progress, that was published in 1958. The book became a worldwide phenomenon and continues to influence thought about organizational management.

Parkinson’s Law is typically summarized as “work expands to fill the time available.” We tend to think of this as speaking to the question of deadlines that a boss might set. That is, if you-the-boss give someone a day to accomplish a task, they will get it done much faster than if you had given them a week.

Parkinson (no relation to the doctor who identified Parkinson’s disease) based his observations primarily on the British civil service - particularly the Admiralty, which had an expanding bureaucracy even as the British Navy was shrinking. His book is more focused on staffing levels than on deadlines. A better summary of his observation might be “work expands to fill the man-hours available.”

An offshoot close to the heart of the original Parkinson’s Law is Brooks’s Law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

I think Parkinson was right and would also note that susceptibility to bloat is just as much of a problem for businesses as it is for governments. But I also think that many people go too far in their efforts to counteract the problem - usually by shrinking deadlines and/or staffing levels. They seem to think that - since work can expand indefinitely given enough time - therefore work must be able to contract indefinitely given sufficient urgency.

In field after field, I know people who used to love their jobs but have become disillusioned and started counting the days to early retirement because of time pressures that are imposed on them by efficiency-obsessed management. I’ve also seen once-effective organizations emerge from cutbacks as ineffective shells.

Maintaining a healthy organization - like maintaining your own personal health - is a delicate balancing act. Bloat isn’t healthy, but neither is starvation.

I like to think that Parkinson - who allowed himself three years to turn his essay into a classic book - would agree that the shortest possible deadline isn’t always the best approach.