How to Use Common Software To Thrive In Today's Lean Organizations

As organizations continue to restructure and become more lean than ever, many of us find ourselves today with more and more work to do since there are less and less people left to do it. When my parents were in the work force, if you needed a report written or a presentation put together you could ask your department secretary (later renamed the "admin") or you could go to the graphics department to help you out. Today the expectation is that you will do all of this work yourself. In addition, as people leave organizations the expectation is that business continues on as usual with no interruptions; which means their work gets added onto yours.

The first reaction to this is to try to step up by putting in more hours and work harder than ever to hold on to what you have and be grateful you are a survivor. This may work temporarily, until you either get burned out or run into a clash with your other life (spouse, kids, family, church, health). The problem here is that simply doing more of what you did before is not going to work out in the long term. If the answer is simply more hours, it will not be long before these hours are transferred to someone somewhere else in the world where labor costs are much lower. The real answer for proving your value to our organization and keeping your sanity is to find ways to do things differently such that you can get the most work done in the least amount of time.

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