Jared Sandberg has a great column in this morning's Wall Street Journal, titled "March Tournament Is Really Maddening, But Not the Games" It's about all those estimates of "lost productivity due to the NCAA tournament.  Here's an excerpt.

"Every year, in the weeks before the NCAA's basketball tournament, consultants, high-tech executives and lawyers warn of its perils to the workplace. Betting pools leave companies legally exposed, they say. Game video cripples office computer networks. Hackers can exploit fan interest. Corporations can suffer multibillion-dollar productivity losses. But the real madness of March is excessive fear mongering in the workplace, where legions of employees don't know Blue Devils from Buckeyes. To them, March Madness has more to do with that unspeakable Spring Break in Cancún.

Read the article for examples and cogent discussion.  Then remember this any time you see estimates of lost productivity.

Companies publish these figures for a reason.  That reason is publicity. So they look for dramatic numbers and make some interesting claims.

They may even copy from each other. Sandberg tells us about a company called eTelemetry. Their news release refers to "up to $3.8 billion in lost productivity."

My guess is that they're using last year's figure by Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Why not use this year's number.  Well, this year's Challenger number is $1.2 billion, which is not nearly as dramatic.

Most lost productivity numbers are bogus anyway.  They're based on wild assumptions that are almost never stated. But they are presented with a decimal point, which creates the illusion of false concreteness.

My favorite assumption is the idea that people who work eight hours are productive for the whole time.  This is impossible.

Monitor yourself and your friends.  If you're working an eight hour day about the best you're probably able to do is 70 percent productive or about six hours. 

That's because of normal and necessary slippage.  You chat with friends.  You take breaks. It's the way life works.  You might be able to get 100 percent productivity out of robots, but it will never happen with people.

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

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