How to deal with "Doing more with less"

I used to think this saying was moronic. It made me see RED. I've seen the destruction it causes.

I first heard it when I was in the Navy, in the context of the Defence White Paper that led to calls for value for money, which of course isn't a bad thing in itself, but what followed over the next nearly 20 years was a whole series of disasters - workforce reductions which amounted to a very painful, psychological contract-breaking, values-compromising military personnel redundancy process (the terms COMPing and IMPing will make you shudder if you remember this), followed by a mass voluntary exodus, personnel shortages, ships being tied up, years-long progressive Service personnel overload and mental health deterioration, corner-cutting (very broad sweeping comment here, this is a big topic), and ultimately, these historical issues contributed to major systemic failings, one of which was the recent loss of HMNZS Manawanui.

I still think the statement "doing more with less" is moronic if we take it at face value and assume nothing else changes. But nowadays, my work in strategy has given me a clearer idea of how this statement can work for us - because moronic or not, it is often what we have to work with.

It's about leverage. Leverage is about applying a small effort or force to create a larger effect or force. It's about amplifying force with the use of a fulcrum (the triangle in my diagram).

The idea behind the statement "do more with less" is wanting people to achieve more outputs with less effort, which is what leverage is about.

My five year old learnt about this at MOTAT recently. We played on a fun contraption where I stood on a platform and she could experiment with pulling different ropes to see whether she could lift me. Of course, the furthest away rope made it easiest (that's her in the bottom right of the picture pulling her little heart out).

My 5 year old didn't have enough strength to lift my weight when she was close to the fulcrum, but moving further away allowed her to use her same 5 year old strength and send me flying up on my platform (to her utter delight!)

But here's the thing, if she'd kept pulling on the same rope and gotten more and more tired, having less and less energy to expend and being able to apply less and less force, even she would know she wasn't on a winning wicket. She knew something had to change if she wanted to create more force to lift my platform, so she tried a different rope. She essentially moved the fulcrum by increasing her relative distance from it compared to mine. In doing so, she increased the leverage.

Where the statement "doing more with less" becomes moronic is where we think we can do more with less, if nothing else changes.

So if you're being asked to do more with less - the big question becomes, what needs to change to make it achievable??

Doing more with less is not literal. It's not literal because it's not physically possible. Ok, you might argue there could be some efficiency gains that could allow us to do more with less by eliminating wastage or inefficiencies. That is typically what people are getting at, but in my experience, three things are relevant here -

  1) These gains are usually minor

  2) They always cost something

  3) Humans are not very good at counting future costs or weighing them accurately with current benefits (due to bias)

To give you a very real example, one of the costs of better value for money in the military was sailors' 'shore postings' which are jobs ashore to give them and their families a break from sea-going. And you can imagine what that ultimately costs…

So if the statement "doing more with less" is unhelpful when taken literally and when it assumes that we can achieve it without changing anything else, how do we work with it?

The answer is to re-think the fundamentals - which is like moving the fulcrum.

If you're being asked to do more with less, here are some things you can re-think to help you achieve the leverage you need…

• Re-define 'more', that is, re-think your goals and outputs. This might mean challenging what 'more' means. It might mean 'different' or 'staged' rather than just more of the same thing. Or it might mean pushing back on what's achievable.

• Re-defining goals might mean also re-thinking the longer term vision. Is it still realistic to head where we're heading?

• It might even mean re-defining your whole purpose. With less, can you even serve the same purpose? Is it even helpful to try?

• Focus your efforts on the clever critical few things that will create the biggest impact in the system you're working within (this is the leverage part, and identifying where to place the fulcrum requires expertise, creativity and courage).

• Re-define 'less', ie. work within your new constraints - not your old ones. Be mindful of the longer term cost if you don't do this (like my 5 year old pulling on the same rope and getting tired).

If you want help with working out how to do more with less in a sustainable, focused, impactful way, I'd love to help with that. It's my jam. I love equipping people for this modern challenge that seems to only be getting more and more challenging.

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