I was adjusting the settings on my laptop the other day, trying to figure out why my screen kept dimming at the most inconvenient times, and it got me thinking. Not about laptops or screens, but about routines. Odd jump, I know. But there's a thread there, maybe. The thing about routines, organizational routines in particular, is that they're kind of like the settings on a laptop. You set them up once, hoping they'll work in the background to make everything run smoothly, and then you don't really think about them much. Until, of course, they don't work, and then suddenly it's all you can think about.
I don't know, maybe that's not the best analogy. But it stuck with me, this idea of routines working in the background, especially after I stumbled across a study (Feldman & Pentland (2003)) by some researchers whose names I can't quite recall. They found that organizational routines can increase team performance dramatically. I think the number was around 271 percent. Or was it 217 percent? Anyway, it was a lot. The exact figure escapes me, but the magnitude of that number, true or not, kind of blew my mind. It made me wonder, how do they measure that? What does a 271 percent increase in performance even look like?
So, I did a bit of digging. Not a deep dive, just a casual skim through some articles and studies. And I found that, yes, there's actually quite a bit of research out there on the impact of organizational routines on performance. One study, for example, was conducted in a manufacturing setting—it observed over a period of months, maybe years (the details are fuzzy), and reported significant improvements in both productivity and job satisfaction when specific organizational routines were implemented. The sample size was substantial, I think, but I can't remember the exact numbers.
But here's the thing. While these studies are compelling, they also leave me with more questions than answers. For starters, what constitutes a "routine"? And how do we know it's the routine that's driving the improvement and not something else, like maybe just the act of paying attention to something? It's like when you buy a new car, and suddenly you see that car everywhere. Did everyone buy the same car at the same time, or are you just noticing it more?
And then there's the part of me that wonders about the applicability of these findings. Sure, a manufacturing setting is one thing, but what about other kinds of work? Creative work, for example, doesn't always lend itself well to strict routines. Or does it? Maybe there's a routine in the chaos that I'm not seeing.
I came across another study, this one more recent, that tried to address some of these questions. It looked at a variety of industries, not just manufacturing, and found similar improvements in performance. The researchers—again, names escape me—seemed pretty confident in their findings. But even they admitted that there's still a lot we don't understand about the mechanisms at play.
So, what do we do with all this? If you're like me, probably not much. I like the idea of routines, in theory. I can see how they might work, like the settings on my laptop, to keep things running smoothly. But I also know myself. I'm not great at sticking to routines, even ones I know are good for me. And I suspect I'm not alone in that.
Maybe the practical implication here isn't to go out and try to increase your team's performance by 271 percent (or was it 217 percent?). Maybe it's just to be more mindful of the routines we already have, to question them, to tweak them, and to see what happens. Not in a grand, transformative way, but in a small, "adjusting the settings on your laptop" kind of way.
Or maybe that's just me, trying to find a neat conclusion where there isn't one. Because, at the end of the day, I'm not really sure what any of this means. I'm not sure if routines are the secret sauce to high performance, or if they're just another tool in the toolbox, something to be used, adjusted, or discarded as needed.
What I do know is that I'm going to be thinking about this for a while, turning it over in my mind like a puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit. And maybe, just maybe, that's the point.