What insights the esteemed Professor Parkinson had. A couple of years after his brilliant formulation that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion", he followed up with his less well-known “Law of Triviality”. This states that:
Organisations give disproportionate weight to trivial
issues.
How true that is. If an important strategic discussion can
be side-tracked into what Parkinson described as “bikeshedding”, it will: he
envisions a meeting where there are two items on the agenda – the commissioning
of a nuclear reactor and the building of a new bikeshed. Of course the majority
of the time always goes to the bikeshed.
In summary, Parkinson postulated that “the time spent on any
item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sums involved.”
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