Make sure your agile team is LAZY
Yes, make sure that your agile team is lazy. If you think I’m using LAZY as an abbreviation of something like LA.Z.Y then I’m not, Yes I mean lazy i.e. the real “Lazy”, the person trying to do a task using the least effort.
Surely, by ‘lazy’ I don’t means dum/stupid, sluggish, or sloppy, I mean ‘pure lazy’, or we can call it ‘lazy smart’ or ‘proactively lazy’… :-)
Yes, we agree that you need to make sure that your team is lazy, and the good news is that you don't need to do anything about it. It's our human default behavior. Actually, we even have a law for it that is called the ‘Law of least effort’.
>> Follow me on Medium so you will get quality content faster than others
Law of least effort
The law of least effort states that individuals will naturally lean towards the path of ‘least resistance’ or the possibility that requires the ‘least amount of effort’.
Laziness runs so deep in us, when you are in a situation where you have multiple paths available but can only travel one, the path that you will choose will be the one that involves less energy consumption.
Come on, let’s be real here. Most of us are just plain lazy. We take the path of least resistance in pretty much all areas of our life. Sometimes we call it being efficient, other times it’s just being effective or shortcuts. Even in the way we talk, we use nicknames and abbreviations to make things easier. And don’t even get me started on the way we shorten words in our chats, it’s just laziness at its finest.
Key point
By keeping the law of least effort in mind the key point to ask is how could we make good work with the least effort by removing all possible frictions. Even what if we take a step further to ask how could we make the bad work difficult by creating or adding more natural or artificial friction
We can find all the important stuff team needs to do and now imagine it a lazy team and try to come up with ideas on how to support the team so it could get done all the important stuff in the best way but least effort.
I’m not saying that everybody is lazy, of course, everyone is different, and even the same person behaves differently under different circumstances and tasks. My point is that everyone is not interested in everything all the time. We usually try to find the fast path that takes the least energy while doing different things in life.
This approach allows individuals to work smarter, rather than harder, by identifying and pursuing opportunities that will have the greatest impact.
It’s more like or connect to another human nature where we wake up in the morning by sacrificing our sleep so we could earn, eat and sleep well at next evening/night. I could feel the pain of all sleep lovers who got to leave their cozy bed in the morning as I’m one of them (love to sleep, ahhhh so relaxing ).
“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” — Bill Gates
Business — Blessing of laziness could make you money
TikTok
TikTok uses the law of least effort in its product by making it easy for users to watch short videos by just scrolling. The app has a simple and intuitive interface, which allows users to quickly and easily record and edit videos. TikTok’s algorithm helps users discover new and relevant content, which reduces the effort required to find interesting videos to watch. All these features and functionality make the app easy and fun to use, which encourages users to spend more time on the platform.
In short, while video browsing was already available, TikTok remove some pieces of friction and made it effortless and easy to browse video resulting in millions of people using the platform.
Netflix
We used to watch movies for decades. People had to physically go to a store or rental service to watch movies, but Netflix removed this piece of friction by allowing users to stream movies with ease. So Netflix removes the friction of rental movies and wins millions of lazy customers.
Spotify
Spotify leverages the Law of Least Effort to make it incredibly simple for users to listen to songs. They provide a vast library of music that is easy to search and access. Their interface is designed to be user-friendly, and they offer personalized recommendations that require minimal effort from the user. Additionally, they have made it effortless to create and share playlists, as well as follow other users’ playlists. By minimizing the effort required to find and listen to music, Spotify has become a go-to platform for music enthusiasts.
Business Life or Organization
Going through daily work life, we usually have two options to practice:
Option A — Traditional approach
We motivate the team to work harder and exercise more control over all important stuff that needs to be done. It may involve hiring extra talent and building some kind of reward and punishment system for people who could or could not achieve their targets. It often demands putting in extra effort and work hours to achieve goals. Here, hard work and dedication are more valued. Of course, it is a very possible and logical choice and we have seen some success here. People are motivated and really skillful to achieve and get things done. The challenge is that it demands constant motivation or some kind of artificial push to keep it up to a certain level. Normally it works well in the start but as time passes the team (consisting of a human being) starts going back to their natural way of doing the least effort and avoiding frictions or hurdles.
Option B — Lazy approach
Embrace the fact that we are lazy and be proud of it :-).
We still have our goals and milestone and we got to achieve them while being lazy.
We just need to build the process or system by putting laziness in the middle where our aim is to achieve all goals and milestones by doing the least effort.
Here the approach is to focus on maximizing results while minimizing effort. This approach encourages individuals to be strategic and efficient in their efforts. With a lazy mindset we usually lead to think long-term, what could we do today that could give us more benefit tomorrow? This mindset is often associated with being more relaxed and taking a more easy approach to work, with the goal of achieving results with less effort.
What could we do today that could give us more benefit tomorrow
This type of thinking encourages individuals to consider what actions they can take today that will generate the greatest benefits in the future. This approach allows individuals to work smarter, rather than harder, by identifying and pursuing opportunities that will have the greatest impact. A lazy mindset encourages people to be more strategic and efficient with their efforts. This can lead to better decision-making, improved productivity, and ultimately greater success in achieving their goals. It can also help in avoiding burnout and maintaining a better work-life balance.
Now with that mindset, we could simply ask the key question from ourselves and our lazy team:
How could we achieve all our goals and milestone in the best lazy way? What we do today that could give us better sleep tomorrow? What we could embed into our process so we could be lazy enough not to remember it? What tools & techniques could we use today that could help us to have more coffee breaks tomorrow? What automation could we do today so we don’t have to do those tasks manually? From a business perspective, we could even ask: what could do to make our client lazy & lazier?
We got to actively find ways to make our job easier and reduce the fraction of the job that we want to do. Our laziness encourages us to innovate new ways of creating easiness around us so we could get the job done in an easy fashion.
Our laziness encourages us to innovate new ways of creating easiness around us.
Lazy innovation is all about finding shortcuts and creating new inventions with minimal effort. It may seem counterintuitive, but being lazy can actually lead to some of the most significant breakthroughs.
Lazy Leader
Like every other experience, if you are an experienced lazy person (let’s call it Principle Lazy Professional) then your value is higher as you know the ways and tricks to reduce the frictions and required efforts to solve daily business needs and to achieve long-term objectives and could optimize processes to save more time and energy not only for yourself but for your team and organization.
Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them. The dumb and lazy ones I give mundane duties. The smart ambitious ones I put on my staff. The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders. — Erwin Rommel
It is especially important when you are the leader and want your team to achieve the desired target. This mindset could help you to see things differently. There is great value if leaders are clearly lazy. If you want your team to achieve some goals. Find out the actions that usually team members do to achieve what is desired and think about how could you minimize the efforts or reduce the friction in achieving those goals. It could even be how to make the process (desired actions) fun and easy so it doesn’t take that much energy.
Put human psychology in the century is key to build better to great teams
I’m not saying that the lazy way is the only way or will the time. A lazy approach is best fitted for routine jobs. Surely there are great advantages and maybe a great need to add other techniques like rewarding good behavior, motivating the team to achieve the best results, etc.
Make good work your identity not an incentive
Important but boring tasks
I think it’s more like torture on humans to ask them for boring tasks. But the truth is that all important tasks are boring and need to get done. We got to minimize the efforts required to do such tasks, and automate boring tasks that need to be done but we rely on humans to do those things.
Use system for recording, not on brain for remembering , brain is for innovative ideas not to remembering the routeins
Add friction what we want to reduce
Remember, the goal isn’t to “be agile” or follow a strict formula. The goal is to get your team to gel so you can do better work together with less friction.
In the context of the Law of Laziness, adding friction can be a useful tool for reducing or discouraging certain behaviors that are not aligned with the goals of the team or organization.
The Law of Laziness states that people tend to choose the path of least resistance when completing a task. By adding friction to certain behaviors, we are effectively making those behaviors more difficult or less attractive to team members. This can help to steer team members towards more productive or desirable behaviors.
However, it’s important to note that adding too much friction can be counterproductive. If we make it too difficult for team members to complete their tasks or achieve their goals, we risk demotivating them or causing them to become disengaged. It’s important to strike a balance between adding enough friction to discourage negative behaviors, while still maintaining an environment that is supportive, engaging, and conducive to productivity.
Overall, adding friction in the context of the Law of Laziness can be a useful tool for encouraging positive behaviors and discouraging negative ones. By making certain behaviors more difficult or less attractive, we can steer team members towards the behaviors that are most aligned with the goals of the team or organization.
wrap-up
So far, it’s clear that the pattern is straightforward: start by identifying the team’s objectives, then figure out how to minimize the obstacles so that achieving those objectives requires the least amount of effort possible. In doing so, we make laziness a central element of the process, recognizing that it’s a natural inclination.
If we find ourselves exerting too much effort or working too hard, it’s a signal that we need to focus on simplifying and streamlining our environment. After all, if we’re constantly pushing ourselves to the limit, it’s not a sustainable approach and we won’t be able to keep going for the long haul
If we are doing too much or too hard then its a sign that we are missing some lazy ideas.
More
Follow me on Medium so you would get quality content faster than others.
