The article's central illustration actually contradicts the claimed point. In the illustration, the secretary, Gloria, has slack, but the purpose her slack serves is not to enable change, which is basically what the article claims slack is for. Gloria's slack is just to make sure that Tony, the CEO, doesn't have any slack: he's working all the time on whatever he thinks is highest priority, and never takes a break. And Gloria is not using her slack to think about ways to reinvent the organization to make it better. In other words, this central example is actually not an example of the benefits of slack: it's an example of efficiency--Tony works at peak efficiency and has no slack. So if Tony is doing good things as a CEO, the conclusion should be that efficiency is good, not that slack is good. Paying a secretary to have plenty of slack to support Tony is just part of the most efficient way for Tony to operate.
A much better example of the benefits of slack would be a CEO who delegates the day to day work to subordinates (which includes "making decisions", the thing the article says Tony's main job is), to give himself slack--more time to think about big picture things and consider ways to change the organization to make it better.
I think the challenge here is that efficiency is always relative to the position the observer is measuring it from.
In the case of Gloria, she should have some amount of slack to figure out how to do the big picture items of her job better, which include how better to help Tony.
Where things get tricky is when looking at the whole organization there's been a long tendency to see "slack" as "fat" that's to be trimmed. So, if a organization has two Glorias who both have some slack time, the argument is the organization would be more efficient and profitable having one Gloria with less or no slack time.
This has worked for corporate profits, but it leads to the humans in these positions unable to have the slack time needed to improve those positions.
Sometimes, this is fine and you can build a very profitable business off of it. For example, McDonald's isn't looking for their frontline staff to do any thinking.
In general, if a position can exist and doesn't need "slack" time, it is probably a position that should be automated as soon as it's cost effective.
If you really need a human to do it though, you should stop trying to treat it like machine and realize the importance of slack time and build it in to the schedule.
> For example, McDonald's isn't looking for their frontline staff to do any thinking.
They tend to punish it. I say that I learned from fast food: how to mop a floor, how to remove burnt coffee, and the value of an education/career.
I think because they work with a lot of teenagers, they tend to get away with belittling people and getting because you’re two back-talks from fired, and you’re not sophisticated enough yet for the subtle burn they can’t write you up for.
“Give a man a little power” was never more clear to me. They have their little empire of dirt and they are going to defend it.
The biggest asshole had a brother who was a pro baseball player. As if what your brother does makes you important (my own brother hated that idea). Congratulations, you sell burgers all day. Your parents must be proud.
The best of them had a mild case of impostor syndrome he tried to cover. Told too many dad jokes, but still top 3 for managers in a clutch situation. I hope he did something with himself besides ace school field trips dropping in on us unannounced.
I don't think Tony necessarily has to be working at full efficiency for this. Say Tony is taking a break when he gets a text from support, "Big Client X is really unhappy, looking for your help on this". He texts Gloria, "grab me previous interactions with X". Maybe he needs financial info that Gloria doesn't have a record of. "Dan, Tony needs to know Y, send me the info?". A chain like this could easily form a graph of tens of people, and will require back-and-forth.
You could imagine a scenario where everyone at the company is taking a break when X has their issue, and that's the best case scenario. Instead of everyone off doing their own thing, they're slacking off but ready to help. The combined context switching in an extreme case like this could be hours or days.
It always reminds me of a fire brigade or an army. You want the firefighters to have lots of slack so that they will be available when there is a fire. On the other hand, having people sitting around "being ready" is costly and there is some optimum amount you need.
The timescale makes a huge difference here. Firefighters need to be next to their equipment to respond to an emergency. US army reservists “One Weekend a Month, Two Weeks a Year” is understating things, but they can hold down a full time job when not called up.
What I meant was that both professions are good examples of "slack-full" professions. They can still be considered to be doing their job well even if they're not actively fighting (either fires or the enemy). If they're consistently inactive they may get a reduction in numbers, but I've never seen anyone seriously suggest to abolish the fire brigades.
Correct. Individual slack (available capacity, aka not running 100% efficient) enables and allows for organizational efficiency, higher output, and agility (the ability to respond to things).
Just like running 100% lean (just in time efficiency) reduces overall resilience when snags occur. Having SOME slack (available capacity) allows for agility when things go awry.
> A much better example of the benefits of slack would be a CEO who delegates the day to day work ... to give himself slack -- more time to think about big picture things and consider ways to change the organization to make it better.
That's not slack. As you just pointed out, that's his regular job. Slack is unscheduled time, not time that's devoted to performing your duties. The point of slack, anywhere, is that it lets you respond to situations that arise, by converting the unscheduled time into time in which you respond. If you're fully scheduled, that's difficult to do.
> Slack is unscheduled time, not time that's devoted to performing your duties.
Time that the CEO can spend thinking about big picture things and considering ways to change the organization to make it better is "unscheduled time". That's the point.
That time is often easy to reschedule. But it's not unscheduled time; if it gets reallocated to other tasks, company performance will suffer because important work isn't being done. It's not slack.
We can easily state this another way. Slack is unused capacity to do work. The CEO planning his strategy is work, the opposite of slack.
If the roles are both equally necessary, why does the CEO make so much more than the secretary?
The CEOs entire enterprise is due to others. If anything explicitly highlighting that undermines the myth they’re the experts.
Both of your models rely on the CEO delegating to focus on the right state change for the business, so I’m not sure why you create two scenarios with squishy ideas of a CEO being efficient or slacking. Some CEOs have casual demeanors, others addiction to Adderall energy; neither is slacking if that’s just the vibe they need to “make it better.”
You seem to be circling the core meme it’s the CEOs job to improve the company and wrapping it up in subjective modals for doing so. Not sure how this refutes the article.
> If the roles are both equally necessary, why does the CEO make so much more than the secretary?
Most jobs don't set salary based on the necessity of having someone in that role, it's usually based on how difficult it is to find a capable person in that role.
If there are 100k people capable of doing the job of the secretary, and 5k people capable of doing the job of the CEO, then the CEO will be able to negotiate a higher pay rate.
Right, the old supply and demand; a heavily accepted model drilled into us.
It’s not the only viable one to the species.
Given automation and first hand experience building analytics systems for VCs and investors; they’re not that much more capable. They’re humans at the same edge of knowledge as any grad of a decent university, of which there are millions.
Teaching “stay in your lane” tacitly props up apathy and disbelief in the proles.
A much better example of the benefits of slack would be a CEO who delegates the day to day work to subordinates (which includes "making decisions", the thing the article says Tony's main job is), to give himself slack--more time to think about big picture things and consider ways to change the organization to make it better.