During my speech at SDA Bocconi in Milan last week, I cited Theresa Amabile's creativity research and the idea of a "time-pressure hangover" -- a decline in innovation because of strict deadlines.
Evan Robinson's essay Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work bolsters the argument that overtime and overly aggressive deadlines actually decrease the quality of work. Written primarily for people in the video game industry (and perhaps inspired by the uprising at Electronic Arts), the piece is still worth a read.
Robinson's argument is sound, as the math behind it seems to be, but I wonder. Some of the most fun I've had while working has been bumping up against an "impossible" deadline. How did the romanticized vision of the "all nighter" or "death march" arise?
[via Managing Product Development]
Update: France has gotten rid of its 35-hour work week, originally instituted just a few years ago.
Related Stories: | Topics:Management, teamwork, Evan Robinson, Milan, Theresa Amabile, Electronic Arts Inc., Culture and Lifestyle |
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Recent Comments | 3 Total
March 22, 2005 at 10:29am by Chris O'Leary
I was once part of a team that built a middle market CRM product called Saleslogix. We spent the last 4 months before shipping working 100 hour weeks.
We got the job done, but at a high cost.
For one thing, the development team blew apart shortly after and, as a result, the product hasn't been significantly improved from the version we shipped in April of 1997.
A similar thing happened to the Macintosh after it shipped back in 1984. People were so burned out that few major changes were made to the product for several years.
The 100-hour per week model also doesn't work if you want to have a family. This means that in many cases products are built by people who are relatively new to the process. As a result, teams often end up reinventing the wheel rather than doing something truly new.
March 22, 2005 at 11:07am by Mike Smock
Some people thrive on pressure and tight deadlines. They like being on a team and accomplishing a difficult objective. But most don't.
Some of our best work was done under impossible deadlines. The mediocre stuff resulted from long lead times and minimum pressure.
The key is selecting the right people.
Regardless of what you do opportunity is what controls deadlines. You can plan all you want but there will always be a customer need or a new opportunity that demands crunch mode.
March 23, 2005 at 2:59pm by Chris O'Leary
I think one key think to keep in mind here is the duration of pressure. A duration of a few weeks or even months is tolerable for most people. A duration of months or years (e.g. never-ending misery) is something else entirely.
As an aside, studies show that one thing that makes the difference between thriving and wilting under pressure is the perceived sense of control. If you think you can control the variables, then you are more likely to be energized. If you think that you cannot control the variables, then you are more likely to be disheartened.
Of course, one of the best ways to achieve a sense of control is to set your own deadlines.
Combine a seemingly impossible task with an externally imposed deadline or mandate and you have a recipe for disaster. in the same vein, add in feature creep imposed from above (e.g. a continually moving definition of what "done" looks like) and you will end up with a similarly negative result.