The line with an empty box

About 20 people worked here across several years, each area with its own owner - product planning, marketing, sales and delivery, customer service, production, quality, development.

During four months when tasks piled up, a few people split them, and the column for hours worked was left empty.

The same approval paper was rewritten from scratch every month, same amount, same headcount. The same product page was remade again and again.

Files piled up past 100,000. Still there today.

In 2021 our own people wrote down eight reasons why work was running late. They put a countermeasure next to seven of them. Assign an owner. Send an alert after one, three and five days. Report two days before the deadline.

The eighth reason has an empty box next to it. That reason was "delay caused by work overload". In plain words, too much work.

The box is empty for a simple reason. The only answer was to hire more people. An alert tells you that you are late. It does not do the work. You can assign an owner, but that person still has 24 hours in a day.

Back then there was no way to raise output without raising headcount. What I do now answers that one line, not the other seven.

One person does that work today. The people did not disappear. The seat moved. Machines gather the material, write the documents and produce the drafts. Deciding what to do and checking the result is me.

That line with the empty box now has something to write in it.