Where the time goes
The research is consistent and uncomfortable: context switching taxes every task it touches, meetings expand to fill the calendar that permits them, and coordination overhead grows faster than headcount. The result is organisations where everyone is busy and progress is slow, because the capacity is being spent on the seams between work rather than the work itself.
What to do about it
- Measure the drag honestly: meeting load, hand-off counts, time from decision to action.
- Cut the coordination need at source through clearer priorities and fewer, better-sequenced goals; most collaboration overhead is a symptom of unclear focus.
- Protect deep work structurally, not by exhortation.
- Replace status meetings with asynchronous signals, and reserve meetings for decisions and problem-solving.
- Let AI take the genuinely mechanical load: assembling reports, chasing updates, preparing context.
Reclaimed time is the cheapest growth lever you have. It is also the first visible result of a working operating rhythm.