5 Ways to Cut the Slack Slowing Your Team

Inefficiencies live in every organization: Overly complicated systems. Unnecessary policies. Meetings that should have been an email.

Nobody planned it that way. You likely have a team full of hard-working people who are busy, responsive, and well-intentioned. And yet, nothing is moving forward fast enough.

There’s a name for what’s slowing you down: Organizational slack. And trust me, it’s expensive. 

What Is Organizational Slack?

Slack is any activity that absorbs resources but creates little to no value. 

It can show up in a variety of different forms:

• Lost time between the question and the response
• Missed opportunity when supply lags behind demand
• Extra cost between what’s necessary and what’s excess
• Unnecessary rules, extra steps, and burdensome policies

These are real gaps in your organization. And they’re costing you more than you know.

What Does Slack Cost Your Organization?

Slack carries a long list of losses for you, your team, and your organization. These losses often show up in painful ways:

• Crippled progress
• A frustrated team
• Depleted morale
• Eroded work quality
• Increased expenses and decreased profit
• Lost impact

According to research from Bain & Company, the average company loses more than 20% of its productivity to the structures and processes that keep people from getting things done. This is almost always born out of complexity.

Why Do Organizations Get More Complex as They Grow?

Complexity arises because growing organizations never drift toward simplicity. No leader has ever said, “We doubled in size and accidentally became more efficient.” 

The truth is that growth creates complexity, and complexity kills growth. 

Every mistake invites a new policy, and every new policy adds a step that slows down everyone who never made the mistake. 

As a leader, don’t overreact to problems. Your reactions can unintentionally create slack that complicates processes and eventually kills growth.

How Do You Cut the Slack? Here are Five Moves You Can Make

Cutting slack comes down to five repeatable moves: Kill a rule, cut a meeting, remove a step, empower a person, and repeat. 

Work through them one at a time, then keep working through them. Slack always grows back, so simplifying is a rhythm and not a one-time project.

1. Kill a Rule

Somewhere in your organization there’s a rule that slows down decisions and protects almost nothing. It may have been created with good intentions, but it’s slowing down progress. Kill it.

2. Cut a Meeting

Hear me when I say this: Meetings aren’t the problem. Bad meetings are the problem.

Look at your current schedule and ask:

Can we get the same result without this meeting?

If the meeting were shorter, in a different place, or with fewer people, would we get the same result?

The goal isn’t zero meetings. It’s effective meetings.

3. Remove a Step

Sometimes the step that needs to be removed is you. (This can hurt and be true at the same time.)

For years I oversaw the videos we create to build interest before an upcoming message series. My involvement alone added about 10 steps, from pitching the idea to reviewing the second draft and giving feedback again.

When I finally removed myself, I removed multiple steps at once, and the work got faster and better.

You may be the unnecessary step. Have the courage to find out.

4. Empower a Person

Whenever you’re tempted to create a rule, empower a person instead.

Not only are you entrusting someone with responsibility and authority, but you’re also cutting the slack.

Write a rule, and you get compliance. Empower a person, and you get a leader.

5. Repeat the Process

Peter Drucker said, “Only three things happen naturally in any organization: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”

Great leaders simplify. 

Slack grows back. Cutting it is a continual discipline of leaders doing it right.

Keep Growing

If the rule that’s slowing you down is one you created, you’re in good company. Sometimes the best way forward is to rethink what worked in the past and make room for what’s next.

Read this post to learn why great leaders test everything, embrace change, and ultimately break their own rules.