We've become obsessed with being busy, and lost sight of being productive.
A building company reduced staff hours from 45 hours per week to 38 hours per week, with no change in annual pay, and didn't have a blip on the bottom line.
A well functioning team can be many hundreds of times more productive than a poorly functioning team. Whereas the most efficient worker is only going to be ten times more productive than your least efficient worker, at best.
Think about the last design team on your building project, or the workgroup you sit with, or the subcontractor who installed your plumbing. How do they rate on the "effective team" scale?
We've lost sight of the benefits of intensive work and traded it in for long hours of solo drudgery.
How much more productive could we be if we spent less time working?
How would the construction industry change if we all learnt how to work hard, fast, and together?
We might build more, better, for less.
Which sounds like a piece of the solution to our housing crisis...