Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.
A.clearing | B.commercial | C.cut | D.effectively | E.exhausting | F.likewise |
G.range | H.restoring | I.scarcity | J.surprisingly | K.underestimated | |
The best bosses know how to subtract work
Companies are used to celebrating addition. Profits, customers and share prices should go up rather than fall. Innovation is the adding of new products. Larger numbers are a measure of career success.
Firms are not always opposed to subtraction. There are good kinds of cuts. Reducing costs is a necessary part of management, though not a welcome one. But the value of doing less is 21 . The best bosses are those who take things away as well as add them on.
That means 22 time for employees to get work done. Meetings are almost always called by bosses. Some are useful; many of them are not.
Shopify, an e-commerce firm, began the year by deleting 12,000 meeting s from corporate calendars, and asking everyone to think carefully before 23 them. The company reports a rise in productivity as a result of the 24 .
The only thing worse than having too many meetings is not being invited to them at all. So whenever meetings take place, 25 large numbers of people can turn up. Minus-minded managers will give employees permission not to attend if they are not needed.
Good bosses, 26 , will send messages when necessary, not every time a bright idea pops into their head. They will reduce the tempo of work, by leaving employees time to concentrate. They will be clear if something is urgent or not.
Subtraction is not just about removing day-to-day distractions. It’s also about taking decisions to kill off projects and products that are going nowhere, and to focus efforts on the most important bits of the business.
In “The Case for Good Jobs”, a new book, Zeynep Ton of MIT Sloan School of Management argues that doing less can often make 27 sense. Costco, a well-regarded American retailer has a deliberately limited product 28 . That means it can focus its buying power more effectively, forecast demand more accurately and use its employees’ time more productively.
Less may not sound like a great outcome for customers, but at some point choice is deeply 29 . When you have spent more time trying to decide what to watch on a streaming service than it takes to go to the cinema and watch “Oppenheimer” twice, 30 seems pretty attractive.