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Deep dives into design thinking, creative process, and the intersection of business and aesthetics.
The meeting that should have taken five minutes
It started with a simple request.
A manager needed a report for an afternoon meeting. Nothing complicated just a few numbers showing sales activity from the previous month. The request seemed straightforward enough. Yet by lunchtime, three employees had touched the task. One exported data from the CRM, another cross-checked figures in a spreadsheet, and a third searched through old emails trying to find the latest version of a report that someone had created a few weeks earlier. What should have taken five minutes ended up taking the better part of the morning.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Most businesses don’t lose productivity because employees are sitting around doing nothing. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Teams are working hard, calendars are packed, and inboxes are overflowing. The challenge is that a surprising amount of time gets consumed by activities that don’t directly move the business forward. Because these tasks are scattered throughout the day, they often go unnoticed until someone stops to add up the hours.
The small tasks nobody Thinks About
Ask most employees where their time goes, and you’ll hear answers like meetings, customer support, project work, or managing clients. Rarely does anyone mention the ten minutes spent looking for a document, the fifteen minutes spent chasing an approval, or the twenty minutes spent copying information between systems. Yet these are the moments that quietly add up throughout the week.
Think about your own business. How often does someone say, “Can you resend that file?” or “Which spreadsheet has the latest numbers?” How many times does a project stall because one person is waiting for information from another department? These interruptions feel normal because they’ve become part of the routine. The problem is that normal doesn’t always mean efficient.
The numbers are more significant than you think
Let’s be conservative and assume an employee spends just thirty minutes each day on repetitive administrative work that could be reduced or streamlined. That doesn’t sound like much. Most people spend longer deciding what to watch on Netflix. But over a five-day week, that’s 2.5 hours. Over a year, that’s approximately 130 hours for a single employee.
Now multiply that across a team of ten people. Suddenly you’re looking at more than 1,300 hours annually. At an average employment cost of $30 per hour, that’s nearly $40,000 worth of time spent on low-value activities. And for many businesses, the actual number is significantly higher because those thirty minutes are often closer to an hour or more.
Busy doesn’t always mean productive
One of the biggest traps growing businesses fall into is confusing activity with productivity. Employees are constantly moving, responding, updating, searching, following up, and coordinating. Everyone feels busy, which creates the impression that work is getting done efficiently.
But being busy and being productive are not the same thing. If a talented employee spends half their morning updating spreadsheets and tracking down information, they’re still working hard. They’re just not spending their time on the work that creates the greatest value. It’s a bit like hiring a skilled chef and then asking them to spend most of their day washing dishes.
Start looking for the time leaks
The good news is that productivity problems don’t always require dramatic solutions. In many cases, the biggest opportunities come from identifying small inefficiencies that occur repeatedly. A task that wastes five minutes doesn’t seem important until it happens fifty times a week.
Businesses that regularly examine how work flows through the organization often discover that the issue isn’t a lack of effort. It’s where that effort is being directed. When teams spend less time on repetitive administrative work, they gain more time for customers, innovation, problem-solving, and growth.
The question isn’t whether your employees are working hard. It’s whether they’re spending their time on work that actually matters. And if you’re not measuring where the hours are going, you may be surprised by what you find.
The meeting that should have taken five minutes
It started with a simple request.
A manager needed a report for an afternoon meeting. Nothing complicated just a few numbers showing sales activity from the previous month. The request seemed straightforward enough. Yet by lunchtime, three employees had touched the task. One exported data from the CRM, another cross-checked figures in a spreadsheet, and a third searched through old emails trying to find the latest version of a report that someone had created a few weeks earlier. What should have taken five minutes ended up taking the better part of the morning.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Most businesses don’t lose productivity because employees are sitting around doing nothing. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Teams are working hard, calendars are packed, and inboxes are overflowing. The challenge is that a surprising amount of time gets consumed by activities that don’t directly move the business forward. Because these tasks are scattered throughout the day, they often go unnoticed until someone stops to add up the hours.
The small tasks nobody Thinks About
Ask most employees where their time goes, and you’ll hear answers like meetings, customer support, project work, or managing clients. Rarely does anyone mention the ten minutes spent looking for a document, the fifteen minutes spent chasing an approval, or the twenty minutes spent copying information between systems. Yet these are the moments that quietly add up throughout the week.
Think about your own business. How often does someone say, “Can you resend that file?” or “Which spreadsheet has the latest numbers?” How many times does a project stall because one person is waiting for information from another department? These interruptions feel normal because they’ve become part of the routine. The problem is that normal doesn’t always mean efficient.
The numbers are more significant than you think
Let’s be conservative and assume an employee spends just thirty minutes each day on repetitive administrative work that could be reduced or streamlined. That doesn’t sound like much. Most people spend longer deciding what to watch on Netflix. But over a five-day week, that’s 2.5 hours. Over a year, that’s approximately 130 hours for a single employee.
Now multiply that across a team of ten people. Suddenly you’re looking at more than 1,300 hours annually. At an average employment cost of $30 per hour, that’s nearly $40,000 worth of time spent on low-value activities. And for many businesses, the actual number is significantly higher because those thirty minutes are often closer to an hour or more.
Busy doesn’t always mean productive
One of the biggest traps growing businesses fall into is confusing activity with productivity. Employees are constantly moving, responding, updating, searching, following up, and coordinating. Everyone feels busy, which creates the impression that work is getting done efficiently.
But being busy and being productive are not the same thing. If a talented employee spends half their morning updating spreadsheets and tracking down information, they’re still working hard. They’re just not spending their time on the work that creates the greatest value. It’s a bit like hiring a skilled chef and then asking them to spend most of their day washing dishes.
Start looking for the time leaks
The good news is that productivity problems don’t always require dramatic solutions. In many cases, the biggest opportunities come from identifying small inefficiencies that occur repeatedly. A task that wastes five minutes doesn’t seem important until it happens fifty times a week.
Businesses that regularly examine how work flows through the organization often discover that the issue isn’t a lack of effort. It’s where that effort is being directed. When teams spend less time on repetitive administrative work, they gain more time for customers, innovation, problem-solving, and growth.
The question isn’t whether your employees are working hard. It’s whether they’re spending their time on work that actually matters. And if you’re not measuring where the hours are going, you may be surprised by what you find.