No More More With Less

When resources get tight, people are often extolled to do "more with less." This is sometimes the result of dips in funding, or perhaps a co-worker leaving suddenly. Whatever the reason, there is now less of what there used to be.

All other things being equal, you can't do more with less. Lots of people would like to believe that you can, but they are just fooling themselves. If you are saying it to others, you are likely really saying "Don't complain, just work harder." If you are saying it to yourself, perhaps you have visions of being "the scrappy team" with the "can do" attitude that impresses the higher ups with their "resourcefulness." That's not a bad attitude, but believing doesn't make it so.

Doing more with less? I don't buy it. 

That said, there are other possibilities.  

You can certainly do less with less. If you lose a team member or have a cutback in resources, you might be able to cut out things that aren't really very useful or efficient. In fact, not doing those might actually be a good thing. Cutting down the number of things you are doing might actually give you time focus on other, more important, things. This might give the illusion of doing more with less, but it is actually doing less with less (or doing different with less, which we'll get to).

It might also be possible to do more with same. If you give yourself a cold, hard look, you might realize that you are not always taking advantage of what is already available in terms of resources to improve performance. This might even include some unlikely candidates, such as taking advantage of sick leave or annual leave to recharge and reset, taking advantage of a training opportunity provided by the company, etc. The resources haven't changed, but you've found a way to make better use of them.   

A final option is to do more with different, and this is the usual result of trying to do more with less. You end up doing less with less, but if you do things differently, it might be an improvement overall. For example, if there is a way to automate a previously manual task, that might free up resources. Getting rid of "zombie" meetings or reports might free up resources. Moving to a different tool or to a managed service might be a net gain in productivity even if team size stays constant or shrinks. 

I like to believe (unless convincing evidence is presented to the contrary) that most people in most workplaces are trying to do an honest day's work. Let's not be dishonest by pretending that it is possible to do more with less.