Have you ever sat in a meeting about meetings, or a meeting to discuss an agenda, or a meeting to discuss the formation of a committee, or a meeting to discuss how the sales department should complete the new business acquisition form before giving it to the marketing department, and asked your aching brain: is this really necessary? Have you ever felt your life slipping through your fingers, and wondered if there is an alternative to endless, fruitless committees?

Freelancing Kicks Butt Because…

You Leap Free of Corporate Bureaucracy

Go freelance and reclaim your time

You will only live once, so it’s reasonable to resent the time-wasting tendencies of many large organisations. Go freelance, and you’ll find that most of your time is spent working. Because you’re being paid by the hour or day, clients will want to use your time for something real. Meetings are more likely to be focused and finite, if they happen at all.

And because you’re not part of their bureaucratic, Kafkaesque nightmare, you don’t have to attend monthly meetings, or pep-talks, or time-murdering chats about the Xmas party.

Work expands, your time evaporates

New Scientist recently revealed the science behind the way work expands to fill our time, and the way bureaucracies grow out of control. The article references Major Parkinson, who in 1944 discovered that he and his administrative colleagues were not as essential to the war effort as he had thought.

When, due to illness and leave Major Parkinson was left to run the administration of his department alone, nothing bad happened, despite a mounting backlog of paperwork. The war continued regardless.

As Major Parkinson said, “There had never been anything to do. We’d just been making work for each other.”

Chiefs need Indians

Major Parkinson went on to write a book about his observations. Among his discoveries was the fact that between 1914 and 1928, administrators in the British Admiralty increased by nearly 80%, while the number of sailors to administer dropped by a third and the number of ships by two-thirds.

Parkinson believed that admin levels rose exponentially because hierarchical management structures demand it: every person with power needs subordinates. So regardless of actual workloads, you can expect an organisation to grow as people are promoted.

By Leif Kendall, freelance copywriter and web marketing consultant

Image ‘jump’ by Guille

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TGIF Discussion

Are you an Indian just because your boss is chief?

Do you ever get the feeling that your job is just to be your boss’ subordinate? Tell us your experiences of organisational-overload. Or have you found that freelancing frees you from this kind of corporate baggage? Leave your comments below…