The Art of Reduction

We are wired for searching solutions by adding things. This leads to rules, processes and ultimately organizations being overly complex and bureaucratic.

What happens to the administration when the work diminishes? Cyril Northcote Parkinson asked himself this question and his subject of investigation was the British Colonial Office, an independent department of the British government that was responsible for the administration of the British colonies from 1854 to 1966. Parkinson found that the number of civil servants in this Colonial Office grew regardless of the work at hand. This office had the most civil servants when it was integrated into the Foreign Office in 1966 for lack of colonies to administer. The organization was busy, but not in a productive way; it was mostly busy with itself.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson’s Law

Reduction is an art that administrations seem not to be very proficient in. Less is more. This was the motto used by the famous Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to describe this and thus his art. His colleague Richard Buckminster Fuller saw it quite similarly, although he was referring more to the…