David French | 11/06/2013 9:24:39 AM

This article was originally published as 'Busy' in http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/ on 18/5/2013.

Being busy is good, and if you are a protestant being busier is (apparently) even better. But what is busy–good and what is just wheel-spin?

Recently two articles featuring John Borghetti appeared in the financial press. Both discussed his strong work ethic and his expectation that staff should be on call 24/7, including weekends, answering emails, phone calls and attending to teleconferences. Today the financial press reports a profit downgrade from Virgin, caused at least in part by the installation of the new Sabre reservations system. I am a keen Virgin customer, but even an occasional flyer cannot help but come to the conclusion that the Sable experience has cost dearly. Was it installed too quickly? Were there short-cuts? Is John’s 24/7 culture paying off?

Airlines are one of the most difficult of all businesses and I confess to not running one. What I have done however is build a meaningful regional financial services business in a pretty ugly economic environment. There have been plenty of times where I have worked till midnight or gotten up at 3am to meet some deadline or another, and I’ve spent countless weekends in the office. One thing I have learned is that you can be too busy - too much on and no time to think leads to problems. Responding to myriad emails, generated at others’ whim causes clutter of the desk and mind, and short-circuits intuitive insight. Worse, it eats into the time available to properly investigate those insights.

When we look at successful people round the world, it is easy to follow the mantra that “money makes money”. But people with money can call the shots on what they do with their time. So perhaps money makes time, and time and lack of clutter is the thing that facilitates good decision making.

John and others say they expect staff to be on call 24/7, but what is the cost? Is the implicit assumption that a weekend with the kids is (from a business point of view) wasted, also robbing the organisation of the personal downtime to consider the things that could have gone wrong with the implementation of Sabre - to “sleep on it” as it were?

I am all for being busy, but let’s make our busy-ness count. That means listening to that inner voice, doing our homework and moving on those things that we can make happen.

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