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Vox Pop: Re-creating scarcity

I have a friend who told me he was thinking about giving his project managers a weekly pile of chips that could be redeemed for person-hours in meetings. So, to schedule firewalled, group face-time, the PM would need to cough up the equivalent number of tokens from her pile. Thus, one, long, all-hands meeting might require the whole week's stack. While, fewer, shorter meetings with smaller groups made the pile go further.

It was just an idea, and I'm pretty sure he never implemented it, but I think it's a fascinating concept. Why? Because I love the idea of re-introducing scarcity into systems that lack boundaries.

Think how the internet in particular (for better and worse) is working to erase any sense of scarcity in our lives -- at least in terms of access to people and ideas. You can email anybody any time; you can divebomb onto someone's radar screen with an IM or SMS; you can have Amazon deliver almost anything to your door tomorrow morning; you can find and download from millions of files instantly; and, given the right tool, you can locate almost any fact in seconds.

But what about the very real (and truly limited) resources that involve human time and attention? Do we want to make ourselves as available as Google and Wikipedia are? Do we want our entire staff to be "always on" for anyone who wants them? What if, for example, emails to a distribution list cost something?

The Question to You

Have you thought about ways to re-introduce scarcity into your life and work? Are you or your team using any homemade systems to govern resources that might otherwise become overtaxed or abused? How would you solve the “too many long meetings” problem?

tclancy's picture

Allocations Market

I proposed a similar solution to our allocation problem at work. At the time, work was allocated via a weekly meeting between project managers and team leads who arguing over fake projections and demanding every job be done by the best team member. I suggested each pm be given a dollar total based on the jobs they were managing and allowed to bid for services each week. Name-brand services (e.g., "I need developer X") would incur a premium over the regular hourly rate.

My thought was the scarcity would encourage more accurate forecasting (as opposed to reserving time way in advance that you wind up not using), reduce the amount of name-brand development and reduce the arguing and time wasted in allocation meetings. You'll note the meeting could be replaced entirely by a shared spreadsheet or fairly simple app.

The idea died a horrible death.

 
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