Many hands make much work
A couple of years ago while getting into debate with friends and family about immigration and Britain leaving the EU, I read about the Lump of Labour Fallacy.
In summary its the misconception that there’s a fixed amount of work within an economy when, in fact, people tend to drive demand.
This is kind of obvious when you think about it. A new housing estate drives demand from local services. In 1820, America probably didn't have enough work for the millions of immigrants that came ashore in the following decades.
It’s interesting to consider this principle in companies. Do many hands really make light work or do they tend to drive-up demand and create new work that self-sustains?
I think there are entire groups of people, perhaps entire departments that exist and need to exist because of themselves. As a programmer over the last couple of decades, I've learned new ways of working and building things that call into question entire systems of people.
What I often see is that some ways of working reinforce themselves and often two groups of systems reinforce each other.
Moreover, those that work within the system either immediately see change as bringing down what is a house of cards, which it may, though they should be optimistic in being redeployed and learning new things, or they see only in terms of their current process, which is years ingrained and cannot imagine how many of their normal activities could be eliminated.
I think the latter is worse. I think we should all have a healthy amount of job insecurity. Hell. Even the world’s richest man has some.
