Many hands make light work.
The oldest record of this proverb is from the 1300s and appears in a chivalric romance story called Bevis of Hampton. The story involves Sir Bevis' intrepid adventures, surviving an assassination attempt devised by his stepmother, being abducted by pirates and fighting off a lion.
Tales and proverbs like these are timeless, but they don’t always age well or ring true in every situation. And they don’t always apply to today’s workplace.
If you’re lugging brick and stone up a mountain, sacking a castle, or overseeing a medieval coup, then the more people you have on deck the better! But in the modern information age, the same rules don’t always apply.
Because most of us aren’t digging ditches here.
Adding more employees to a project or throwing them into a meeting room doesn’t always equal better productivity or outcome. Often, it creates a workplace culture where teams work in silos where employees run their own race. But of course, in principle, a helping hand goes a long way. Because when workload is shared, it can reduce burdens and bottlenecks.
In today’s world, staying connected digitally is easier than ever. But employees are drowning in the endless availability of technology and collaboration tools. While engagement is up, quality is compromised.
In this blog, we’ll explore why collaboration is a myth and when it has its purpose.
Fallacy or fact?
To speed up a project and become more productive, you don’t necessarily have to split the tasks up and add more people to accomplish it faster. Let me prove it.
Take pregnancy as an example. It takes one woman nine months to make one baby. That checks out, right? But nine women can’t make a baby in one month.
So yes, when employees are working with their hands or completing more physical tasks, a second pair of hands goes a long way. This makes complete sense. Your output just doubled.
But we’re not digging ditches here. Nor are we picking nuts, stones or apples. Collaboration doesn’t always work, and it doesn't always equal a better idea or better product.
But too many cooks in the kitchen isn’t a good thing.
Bringing in redundant employees offsets the balance of productivity. Ensure managers are using their talent wisely by having a specific reason for each person you invite to contribute to your project. Or even better, let employees do their thing. Place trust in them. Their ideas and work will be better for it, and they're more likely to get things done quicker.
Strike a balance
Too much of a good thing ain’t that good at all. And there’s a fine line between productive collaboration and aimless group work.
Some employees like to put their headphones in and crank through a to-do list, while others like to work together more closely. Both are okay, but it’s important that managers don’t rely only on collaboration.
Also, while management might evaluate individuals on their willingness to work together, few are conscious of the real cost of this obsession with teamwork. Research from the University of Virginia estimates that IT and tech-related employees spend at least 75 per cent of their working week explaining ideas and work, responding to emails, or yapping on the phone. That means as little as 25 per cent of time is spent working.
The other problem is that there’s a lack of accountability and responsibility for work. When projects are given to multiple individuals and they are left to collaborate on the entirety of it, it usually doesn’t give enough ownership to employees and slows things down.
This is especially true in the world of tech and IT.
Throwing more bodies doesn’t make the problem go away, it can actually make things worse. Because most delays and bottlenecks stem from either unclear communication or project leads splitting their attention across multiple projects.
Sometimes things can only be done by one person. Some tasks just take time, and having more people messing around can slow things down. Especially in tech, you’ve got more conflicts emerging. Employees are overwriting work. All a massive pain in the rear.
A good manager should be able to break things down into smaller chunks for employees. Into little chewable pieces. In tech, often a developer will make decisions on one chunk that will impact the way it must be done on another. So having someone else work on those could be disastrous.
So what should we do? Break it down. Help employees slow down and work toward their success.
This means managers need to get better at giving estimates. Clients and stakeholders need to be more patient, manage their expectations, and plan a buffer. Otherwise, the outcome is not going to be good for either side, and the project/deliverable will suffer because of it.
Individuals are crucial to the success of your company. But they require time to observe, think and imagine the new. A schedule packed out with back-to-back meetings does little to stimulate the intellect or stir innovation. The greatest minds in your organisation are usually those who you catch avoiding the pointless meetings.
Not every project benefits from ‘many hands.’ While collaboration can be powerful in certain contexts, piling on more people often introduces confusion and slows progress, which is why it’s important to strike a balance.
About us
Martian Logic has been empowering HR teams for years with simple, scalable solutions that let organisations thrive. Our intuitive HRIS streamlines everything from recruitment and onboarding to performance tracking and employee engagement. By using our platform’s analytics and real-time insights, you’ll know when collaboration truly works—and when too many hands might muddy the waters. Contact us today to discover how Martian Logic can help you strike the right balance between teamwork and individual responsibility, ensuring both productivity and innovation in your organisation.
