Two pieces in national papers this month have advanced the idea that laziness in the workplace is a very good thing

IS LAZINESS SET to become the latest management fad? Could being bone idle give you a distinct advantage over the plodders?

We only ask because Fleet Street has put forward this idea not once but twice over the last few weeks.

The first piece, in the Daily Telegraph, featured the appealing headline, “Why being lazy and procrastinating could make you wildly successful” (something wrong with the grammar there, but we’ll let it pass).

Enterprise editor Rebecca Burn-Callander unearthed some fascinating titbits on laziness as management philosophy. Here for example, in a paragraph entitled “You can only be lazy if you’re clever”, she offers the thoughts of a pre-war Prussian army chief:

“Kurt Gebhard Adolf Philipp Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord was Germany’s chief of the army before the Second World War. He said that all his officers were two of the following: clever, diligent, stupid or lazy. According to the general, the most dangerous officer was one who was stupid and diligent. He couldn’t be trusted with any responsibility because he would always make mischief.

“However, officers who were both clever and lazy were qualified for the highest leadership duties, because they possessed the intellectual clarity and the ‘composure’ necessary for difficult decisions.

“They are masters at avoiding ‘busywork’ such as pointless meetings, he claimed, they delegate to others to get things done efficiently, and they focus on the essentials rather than being distracted by unnecessary extras.”

The same argument was advanced a couple of weeks later by Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway. She told the story of a friend who had cut down her work hours as a result of spending a lot of time with a new boyfriend. The effect on her career had been very positive because she had learned to become more efficient. Kellaway ponders:

“This experience has led her to a new theory of success that says laziness is good. It is only by being lazy that we become truly efficient, and come to see what is important and what is not. The trouble with women, she went on, is that we try too hard. We make ourselves martyrs to industriousness, and far from that being our secret advantage, it is our undoing. If only we were lazier we would do better.”

Kellaway then went on to offer the same example of the Prussian army officer as used by Burn-Callander in her Telegraph piece, thereby demonstrating her own thesis by being bone idle in her research.

Still, we can forgive her this mild bit of plagiarism as she concludes: “most of us are naturally lazy and so what we must do is find a way of coaxing our inner idler back to life.”

ENDS