The Art of Procrastination
Business Management in the Twenty-First Century
Mark I. Algar has led global business
transformations, delivered through
effective program and project
management, for over 40 years. He
has held senior positions while based
in Canada, the United States, France,
and New Zealand across engineering,
supply chain, order to cash, service,
and information technology domains.
For the past 22 years, he has focused
on building team capability while
optimizing business processes for
several leading global companies. He
earned a double honors bachelor of
math degree (computer science and
combinatorics & optimization) from
the University of Waterloo, Canada. He
continues to give back to the industry
through mentoring and topical articles.
© Business Expert Press 978-1-94819-821-9 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
Mark I. Algar
Abstract: In the accelerated pace of business since the
­Internet Revolution, heightened performance e­ xpectations
have emerged across the enterprise. ­Individual ­contributors
and managers are challenged by the ­increased ­workload
and urgency that has resulted. They are ­simultaneously
­juggling work requests from m ­ ultiple sources, s­ upporting
the introduction of new processes, folding in a­ djustments
inherent in the quick pace of change, and laying the
­foundation for their next career progression. This ­article
explores the practical use of procrastination as an a­ pproach
that will free up additional capacity to address these
challenges.
Keywords: business management, continuous
improvement, project management, voice of the
customer
Introduction
The pace of business has accelerated since the ­Internet
Revolution and with it comes heightened performance
expectations for every corporation across internal and
customer-focused processes. T ­oday, c­ompanies face
increasing pressure from a more competitive and
­
global landscape. Minimum expectations are rising.
In this ­context, this article explores procrastination
as an a­ pproach that will free up additional r­esource
capacity to address the issues of compressed time
­
frame and ­ increased complexity that impact busi-
nesses every day. The solutions apply to a company’s
resources regardless of whether they are ­employees
or contractors.
My assessment of the increased work complexity is
broken down across four dimensions:
■■ Accelerated volume of work
■■ Changing organizational models
■■ Formalized input from customers
■■ Rapidly changing requirements
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 The Art of Procrastination
The critical capability I am ­introducing
to improve outcomes is the effective use of
procrastination. That is, purposely d ­ elaying
work on a task that requires ­completion
within a reasonably short time (Thorne
2015). Work requests fall into one of two
­categories: Daily transactional activity, such
as the review and a­ pproval of ­documents
or data updates, or ­project deliverables, such
as the c­ reation of p ­ resentations and white
papers; problem ­assessments; product,
system, or ­process development; or risk
analysis. The ­juggling of tasks assigned
to a manager, director, or more ­senior
­executive is also within scope, though
most of their activity that can benefit from
procrastination will be of a project ­nature
(­introducing process improvements).
Their daily transactional activity tends
to be well structured (for example, status
­report or ­employee ­management related)
or ­exceptions (­resource redeployments)
and thus less able to be deferred. Often,
these m ­ anagement-level resources expe-
rience demands on their time at higher
levels than individual c­ ontributors. This
article proposes techniques to free up
hours that will help all levels of perform-
ers to maintain control over their many
commitments.
I direct these thoughts toward those
­individuals and managers who are already
recognized by their peers and bosses as
very effective in delivering on their com-
mitments while maintaining an acceptable
quality level. It is because of their interest
in doing their best that they are search-
ing for ways to be more efficient. Manag-
ing workload through carefully applied
procrastination will deliver a measurable
benefit.
I have not tailored this article to those
wishing for a method to avoid work
­altogether or to continually put off com-
pleting a required task. I see that approach
as largely responsibility abdication, and in
the long run, procrastination will not help
avoid a problematic assessment that will
prevent these people from succeeding.
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The challenge to the resources of jug-
gling the multiple activities of their ­volatile
workload has increased. Career success is
no longer a simple function of effort and
skill over time within a stable e ­ nvironment.
Instead, it is dependent on maximizing the
measurable value ­delivered to the business,
which directly influences their customers’
satisfaction. For those with internal clients,
it could be an improvement in the manage-
ment of ­inventory that ­reduces ­working
capital (the measurable value), which in
turn generates satisfaction and recognition
by those who requested the changes. For
those with ­external customers, delivering a
product or service that more closely meets
their customer ­requirements will ­normally
increase ­revenue and/or ­margins, with
improved customer ­satisfaction in ­parallel.
­Because of improvements in corporate ­metrics
from e ­ ither of these e ­ xamples, r­esources
will r­ eceive positive a­ cknowledgement that
should, if their ­performance remains consis-
tent, lead to ­future opportunities.
I explore the four dimensions of increasing
work complexity in the following sections and
describe for each several approaches using
procrastination. The mitigation of resource
constraints is the common theme that runs
through each of these sections.
Accelerated Volume of Work
Today, estimates of how long a unit of work
should take to complete are ­ significantly
lower compared with historical time
­estimates. More formalized processes and
closed feedback loops to drive continuous
improvement are two factors that have led
to this change. External pressure from cus-
tomers with requirements to stay ahead
of (or catch up with) the competition is
another. The conclusion for many com-
­
panies is to hasten the speed of change
(De Smet and Gagnon, 2018). As a result of
­cycling through the update process more
rapidly with a smaller scope of changes, the
business flows between supplier and cus-
tomer have been compressed. For ­instance,
the internal expectations of the frequency
Expert Insights
 The Art of Procrastination
of product introductions have increased.
The implementation of more e ­ fficient end-
to-end business processes and integrated
supporting systems is ­ being accelerated
to meet new compliance r­equirements
and to reduce the cost of doing business.
Innovative service o
­ ­fferings and faster
service turnaround are the norms, as is
the ­ expectation of reduced frequency of
service interruptions necessitating r­epair
­ control of scope creep involves procrasti-
or replacement. The requirement for the
hastened responses of corporations to
pressures within their market is the first
­dimension of increased complexity.
What are some of the options to address
the compressed time for completing pend-
ing deliverables? In an example of work
on a product development release, the
development team should be coached to
­ the requestor or possibly a peer, b
focus on the critical agreed-on deliverables
and defined requirements, including stan-
dard safety margins. Procrastination can be
used effectively in two different scenarios.
In the first instance, manage the temp-
tation to do more than agreed. A  ­ useful
­structure to support this is to have a shared
list or collaboration area that makes it
easy to deflect out-of-scope items without
losing potentially valuable ideas for the
future. Those working on improving pro-
cesses, r­estructuring the organization to
simplify the execution and management
of these processes, and updating tools for
the company should work within the pre-
determined bounds of the changes, which
is not a trivial challenge. The early steps
of any project will expose additional oppor-
tunities for improvement not previously
considered. The most effective treatment
is to note these opportunities but not
spend time describing them in detail. The
­customer should review all fresh ideas that
have been raised and discuss adding new,
independent work task(s) before consider-
ing changes to the scope of work already
defined. These new tasks should be sub-
mitted as entirely new work items. The
work performer should try to create an
­impedance to folding good new ideas into
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the existing work tasks—or else an over-
load will result, and the resource will be
set up for criticism for late deliverables in
the future. It is ­better to keep a strict and
narrow scope while meeting the shorter
­
time frame e ­ xpectations than work on com-
pleting a detailed definition of p ­otential
new features or even start to work on these
long-term improvements. The disciplined
nation on further enhancements, pushing
them off to subsequent releases.
Another scenario that uses procrastina-
tion is to approach the completion of the
work iteratively. Each iteration completes
an additional level of detail, continuing in
a stepwise fashion toward the final deliver-
able. Sharing the interim deliverables with
­ eginning
with a high-level outline of the work, will
raise some concerns or disagreements
early on and reduce the level of ­rework
later. Avoiding work on the details will
free up time in the short term. Note that
this may not always be the usual practice,
­especially in Western Europe, where ini-
tial submissions are expected to be very
­mature and complete. In the early days of
an expat assignment I had in Paris, this was
made clear to me. I had begun to set up
a collaborative approach to validate initial
assumptions prior to starting detailed work
on my project similar to what I had used
successfully in North America. I found that
I had entirely missed the expectations of
senior management when I met with them
the first time to discuss my approach. The
positive aspect was that the meeting was
very much earlier in the project than they
expected. But there was concern over the
lack of substantial details that would nor-
mally result from extensive analysis. An
early discussion with the customer may be
required to explain the reasoning behind
the interactive approach and get approval
to implement it.
Deferring work is an additional ­procrastination
scenario, using priority and readiness of any
required inputs to decide what needs to be
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