C. Northcote Parkinson
Officials make work for each other
An office grows whatever the work
Parkinson's Law (1957), chapter 1, on the Admiralty establishment tables; the bicycle shed is from the chapter on high finance
Your team is drowning and you are about to hire two more. This chapter asks whether the new people make new work.
What actually happened?
Parkinson read the old Admiralty establishment tables. Between 1914 and 1928 the Royal Navy's capital ships fell from sixty-two to twenty and its sailors were cut as well, while Admiralty officials rose from two thousand to 3,569, close to eighty per cent more. Two-thirds fewer ships; eighty per cent more men administering them. He found the same curve at the Colonial Office: less territory to govern each year, a larger office each year. An organisation grows at a rate unrelated to the work it has to do.
Two nearly instinctive rules
He reduced the bloat to two lines: an official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals; and officials make work for each other. The first explains why an overloaded manager never asks for a peer. The second explains why the new hires really are busy.
The two new people need a weekly report, an alignment meeting and a review. None of it existed before they arrived.
The growth rate holds whatever the workload
He measured the curve: staff climbed by roughly five to six per cent a year whether the work grew or shrank. The sting sits in the second half. It is not that more work brought more people. The two are simply unhooked.
Cut a product line and the meeting built around it often keeps circulating minutes.
The smaller the sum, the longer the debate
One committee waved a ten-million-pound reactor through in two and a half minutes, argued for forty-five over a bicycle shed costing three hundred and fifty, and spent longer still on twenty-one pounds of refreshments without settling it. Nobody feels competent about the large number.
The loudest item in a budget meeting is usually the one everybody in the room can picture.
Before hiring, separate two kinds of hire
You really are short-handed, and new people really do generate new work. Both hold at once. What decides it is whether the person does the job or manages the people doing the job. The second kind grows the busyness straight back.
Three months in, count how much of the new role's output ever leaves the building.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the team says it is drowning and two new headcount are already approved.
Ask first: once they arrive, who assigns their work and who reads their output - and how many hours does that take from those people?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as never hire. He measured an office that grew with no work to do; he never claimed you always have enough hands.
Lines to keep
Officials make work for each other.
The smaller the sum, the longer the meeting.
Same situation, other people are asking
I'm told this is just what it costs. Is it?Costs won't come down and I can't see where to cut first.Every stage in this takes a cut and each one says it is necessary.Every team keeps a buffer and I've stopped asking why.Everyone says it can't be done cheaper · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.