Frank Butler 0:00
Have there been times that you've pretended to be busy at work?
Paul Harvey 0:04
Do your performance evaluations seem to evaluate everything but performance?
Frank Butler 0:09
Have you ever noticed people who seem really busy don't actually do more than anyone else?
Paul Harvey 0:15
Did you know that employees with unlimited vacation time, generally take fewer vacation days?
Frank Butler 0:21
If this is you or you can relate to these topics, then listen to our new podcast, the Busyness Paradox. Here we share our opinions and takes on current events in business, or personal development, or just succeeding in this paradoxical workplace.
Paul Harvey 0:40
Because work has changed, especially recently, but the way we make people work really hasn't.
Frank Butler 0:47
That's what drives us to talk about these things in this podcast, we're really, really excited to be getting into these issues, because we think there's a great opportunity for workplaces organizations to really change the way we do business.
So just to tell you guys a little bit about us, I'm Frank Butler, I'm a Professor of Management down at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. My doctorate is actually in strategic management. So I'm more on that sort of top management team, macro perspective of organizations. And my co-host here,
Paul Harvey 1:38
Paul Harvey, and I'm a professor at the University of New Hampshire. And my doctorate is in organizational behavior, which is basically the study of people in the workplace.
Frank Butler 1:51
And so really, what's happened here is that I take a top-down approach to examining business, whereas Paul really looks at it from the bottom up.
Paul Harvey 2:01
And we meet in the middle, because we both agree that people are what make the workplace work.
Frank Butler 2:08
And really, it comes down to: it's people that make organizations successful. So how did we get to this idea? Well, first, you know, we probably should talk a little bit about our backgrounds. And I think it really starts actually, with how Paul and I met. Paul, and I met at graduate school at Florida State University. He was several years ahead of me in the Ph. D. program in management. And I was brand new. But we were scheduled or we were set up to share an office. And I walk into the office and I look over and Paul's using this old white macbook, I guess it was, was it an iBook still?
Paul Harvey 2:47
iBook.
Frank Butler 2:48
It was an iBook right?
Paul Harvey 2:49
G4, 2005.
Frank Butler 2:51
So kind of dating us a little bit, Paul. But
Paul Harvey 2:53
Yeah, it was quite new back then too. Like, that was like my "new" laptop in 2005 so yeah
Frank Butler 2:58
Right, exactly. And I was like, Oh my gosh, is it's a Mac user. And back then it wasn't like, Mac's were this huge, pervasive product, or Apple wasn't as well known outside of the iPod, as it is today, obviously, with iPhones and such. But -
Paul Harvey 3:12
Keeping in mind that this is in the context of a business school, right? We may have had the only two Apple products in the entire building that weren't iPods.
Frank Butler 3:22
Exactly.
Paul Harvey 3:23
And we're office mates!
Frank Butler 3:34
And we're office mates. I had an iBook it was white iBook, Paul had the iBook. And we were both like, oh, and I think that sort of made it like, okay, I like this person. And I sort of just started from there.
Paul Harvey 3:36
We should do a podcast someday!
Frank Butler 3:39
Yeah, back then we were even thinking of podcasting even though I don't think they existed
Paul Harvey 3:41
I don't think they existed
Frank Butler 3:43
I think was just radio shows. But you know, we've stayed we've stayed in touch, you know, ever since we've been, I would say pretty, pretty close friends out through that and seeing the ups and downs of each other's you know, personal lives and work lives, whatever it's been going on. And we started talking about things that that that really, I guess, bothered us about what companies do, you know, we would just be like, man, did you see this article about this? Or did you see how this company is doing this? And we just, we -
Paul Harvey 4:14
And not just what companies do but also enough, in a lot of cases, the public response to what companies do either from the media or from, or from authors of management books, the type of thing that you see on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, which we often saw is kind of an over overly simplified view of very complex problems.
Frank Butler 4:39
Oh, man, I tell you those, those like, seven things you should do to be a better manager, you know,
Paul Harvey 4:47
Or unlock your inner management guru do these five things
Frank Butler 4:51
Right. You know, both of us realize that we have this sort of, I don't know it just it makes my skin crawl. See those because truly, you know, with all these books out there, you would think that everybody's now slaying their workplace environment and being super successful. Everybody's now making six figure salaries. But the reality is that they don't. And it largely comes down to these things over simplify truly complex situations and in while there's some benefit to simplifying things, they oftentimes make it seem like everybody's doing this. And the reality is that one size doesn't fit all.
Paul Harvey 5:30
Never. And even things that seem like problems are not necessarily problems for everybody, for every company, and things that seem like good ideas, like unlimited vacation time, can sometimes be detrimental. So it's never as simple as we are often led to believe.
Frank Butler 5:47
Exactly. And that's, and those are those kinds of conversations we had. And we both were like pin, I mean, I just remember, it's like we were talking about a guy that said, you know, I've been really wanting to get a radio station actually, or show on our on our public radio at the university down here, I was like, I've been wanting like a radio show. And it kind of evolved, we were talking about this is like, you know, Paul wanted to do a podcast, I was like, I really want to do a podcast. And I think is just really more about just trying to lay out the complexity of issues when we have to, or just talk about good or bad things in the workplace, you know, just in general, or things that we think are interesting, that could help make you a better employee or better manager. But we're going to do so without telling you this is five steps to success kind of thing. It's more along the lines, you have to find what works for you. And you take that information and try to dissect that how it's going to best help you.
Paul Harvey 6:45
Right. In some ways, it's almost like we're doing the opposite of simplifying, we're trying to uncover the hidden layers of complexity that we often need to deal with if we actually do want to be successful in the workplace.
Frank Butler 6:59
Yeah, and that's, that's it, we just want to talk about these things and bring those issues to the to the front. And in really, quite honestly, we do believe that it's time for organizations to maybe rethink some of the ways they do things, and not in a negative way. But just in general, it's like, hey, because people matter. And because people make organizations successful, or not, or the way we treat them, or don't treat them. It's something that we want people to listen to managers, employees, so they can help ensure that they're all maybe thinking about the more complex aspects of these, but realizing that flexibility at the end of the day is probably going to be what's key. And I think that's it, it's flexibility of how we think about the world today because of what we can do.
Paul Harvey 7:51
Yeah, going back to our earlier point, work is in a lot of ways, fundamentally changed. And the way we manage organizations hasn't always kept up with that. Look at how technology has and has not impacted the way we do our jobs. We can do tasks, calculating a spreadsheet, God knows what else in maybe seconds or minutes that used to take days or weeks. But we're not as a society, as a human race, really not that much more productive than we were 30 4050 years ago. Most estimates say we gain maybe one or 2% per year in terms of efficiency. But we've got the technology to do so much more than that. So we're underutilizing things that are that we have at our disposal.
Frank Butler 8:46
Yeah, we're underutilizing things that actually are now unlocked. Because of that change, for example, you know, because it takes, you know, sometimes matters of seconds to update an Excel table versus going through and filling out the whole paper versions back in the early 80s. Now that person has time to work on developing themselves, or the company can do more to help develop them or better yet, you know, reward them with different activities. I mean, there's so many different ways of coming about these. And we just want to do that we want to have these conversations around the in a lot of cases, the lack of change, and how we expect people to work and maybe think about how can we make that better for everyone, and actually, ultimately have a great impact not only on the people, but again, on the organizations, the customers, the environment, whatever it might be in whatever the topic might be that we'll brush up on.
Paul Harvey 9:45
And boy, there's really never been a better time I think to have these conversations, because the world is kind of forcing us to hit the reset button anyway right now with The COVID related changes that we've seen inside and outside of the workplace, if there's ever a time to step back, and take an objective view of how we work, how we work together, how we manage other people will never have another opportunity like we have right now.
Frank Butler 10:20
And that's it. It's just it's the time it's the place. Yeah. So, you know, we're excited about this, this whole idea. And I said it a little earlier that, you know, we should probably introduce ourselves a little bit to give more insight as to who we are. I'm from Savannah, Georgia, I grew up in the south, I went to the University of Georgia for my undergraduate degree, which I got in management information systems at the time, that was the big thing today, it's about data analytics, you know, we built the databases, they're not using it to, you know, figure out that your purchasing behaviors might mean that you're pregnant or something like that, before you even know, you know, there's crazy how much that's changed in its own right with technology.
Paul Harvey 10:59
So we are using technology in some ways to its potential...
Frank Butler 11:02
Right. Where it makes us more money, even though we don't realize that if we use it appropriately here, we probably make even more money, too. But, you know, that's rational, that's maybe too rational. But you I've started my own business. I guess a couple at this point. Paul, I know has as well.
Paul Harvey 11:23
Yeah, yeah. Long time ago now. I was. Boy, what are we talking about? mid to late 90s, co-owned and co-managed a small home improvement company. I think your entrepreneurial ventures were more involved than mine.
Frank Butler 11:41
Yeah. I mean, I don't know converting people from dial up to broadband, you know, by helping them wire in some Ethernet ports or Wi Fi, you know, it No, but truly, you know, that dates Me too. But our business was helping small to medium sized businesses convert from dial up to broadband and, you know, really helping change the way they do business predominantly in Athens, Georgia, back then I was, I was an undergrad with a colleague, or actually a great friend of mine. We co-founded the business and just had a lot of great success, because at that point, you know, just everybody was charging huge rates, because they wanted to use this real expensive equipment for businesses. And they most of them were too small niche. Yeah, we found our niche. And, you know, had a lot of run with that I ended up after graduating from Georgia, I lived in Atlanta for a little bit working for a decision support system company who basically rewrote software for hospitals to help management make decisions, I was the quality control guy for that. And then I moved to Germany, originally in a study abroad program for a year ended up part of that was an internship, I got that internship turned into a full time job. So I stayed an additional two years. And that actually led to me finally figuring out that I wanted to get a doctorate in mergers and acquisitions. And that's something that, you know, probably touch on it at a later point. And then I came back to the states got headhunted by BearingPoint, which is an IT consulting firm if you know Accenture. BearingPoint was the major competitor. But BearingPoint doesn't exist, which shaped a lot of the way I thought about how people matter in the workplace before I kind of didn't care. And I didn't really think about it, but the way BearingPoint functioned. And you know, it sort of started that kernel of, you know, people matter. And they're the ones who make these companies really successful. And they're part of that a lot of things that go into making an organization work. And I ended up going to Florida State, I've been at University of Tennessee. Chattanooga, ever since I graduate from grad school, done a lot of work with veteran entrepreneurship program, the faculty, Faculty Director there, teach exec ed, so on and so forth. But I love engaging with the practice. I don't just like to be in that theoretical mindset, I want to help people, improve their understanding of organizations, do better be more successful in their organizations? What have you, and, you know, I continue to teach in Germany, I love getting exposure to different cultures. I teach exec ed program in Mexico. You know, just getting these broad experiences that help me think more about businesses and business success and really just about what it takes to be, you know, a better minded person and to understand that flexibility is key. And with that, you know, Paul, Paul can share his also very impressive career to this point.
Paul Harvey 14:43
Yes, I'm a very detail-oriented individual who never forgets things. Office Hours started five minutes ago. I just, I put it on my phone, zoom. So I'll just keep an eye on it. Yeah, I am not infrequently referred to as the consummate, absent-minded professor, and I'm okay with that. But I didn't begin my professional career that that way. I got a degree in finance from the University of Connecticut in 1999, I think, and went to work in corporate finance for about three years, I guess, United Technologies, big conglomerate company up in Connecticut. And while I was there, I already had some idea that, you know, the academic side of things research might be something I was interested in. So I worked in finance. But what I found was interesting was not so much the numbers, the numbers, though, they'll generally do what you tell them to. But the people and the fascinating, sometimes strange, sometimes baffling things that people do in the workplace, that you wouldn't expect those same people to do outside of the workplace, things like pretending to be busy when you're not actually busy. So anyway, come to find out, there's a whole field of study that basically examines that the behaviors of people in the workplace or in organizations called organizational behavior. So once I made that connection, it was just a matter of time, I knew my career was heading towards academia at that point, I started and finished at Florida State University, a little bit before Frank did. I then did something I swore I would never do. When I left, the Northeast went to Florida, I said, I'm never coming back north. I can't dunk never liked the cold, I don't want Yeah. And so naturally, a took a job at the University of New Hampshire farther up north than I'd ever been previously. And I've been there ever since 13 years, and counting at this point. And, and in a lot of ways, it's been a great merging of my academic and professional past. Because there's a lot of companies here that do the sort of work I was familiar with in my United Technologies, days. Defense, manufacturing, propulsion systems, Raytheon, all that fun stuff. And so I've had a lot of opportunity to, like Frank said, step out of the ivory tower, and interact with people who are in the business world in the working world. And to kind of marry that those conversations with what we see in the research that folks like Frank, and I do. And I like to think get a fairly balanced perspective on both the academic and the practical side of workplace challenges.
Frank Butler 18:08
And all that leads us to feeling like we could talk about these kinds of things, you know, our backgrounds are, quote, unquote, expertise, if you want to say, you know, we really, because we enjoy the organizations, and what makes them work, you know, apart from the actual theoretical understanding, you know, we take that and help us inform some of these conversations we have, but there's a lot of things that we don't actually do research on, or necessarily read the research on, but we still have feelings about them and sort of like to dissect that, you know, we like to have conversations around those things, just to get the different viewpoints because of Paul's perspective, you know, especially at the more micro end in mind at the more macro, and we come to discuss things from kind of different perspectives that one might not have seen. And so sometimes we have these aha kind of moments, like, Oh, you know, that, wow, you're right, you know, or I didn't think about that. And I think that's what makes this interesting and fun because of our, our different backgrounds, but yet, we get along, so we enjoy at least having these conversations. And really, so because of that, you know, these things, we felt, we've got to do a podcast, or we got to have these conversations because we want to actually start having this conversation with others too. And so that's why we think this is great, you know, and we'll get we'll share this information but you know, we have a website where you can find our Twitter or LinkedIn and all of that. So we can start having a conversation about these topics. So that that's something that we want to do is we want to have you guys go to our website, business paradox.com I mean, crazy hard, right? But no, the reality is that: buisinessparadox.com, you know, you can sign up for the newsletter or find our Twitter handle LinkedIn site, email us, and be part of that conversation. Tweet us, what have you.
Paul Harvey 20:00
But and please do because you know, we're college professors, we get plenty of time listening to ourselves talk.
Frank Butler 20:08
We love to hear ourselves talk don’t we?
Paul Harvey 20:10
Well, you know, I think we're tired of hearing ourselves talk to some degree, we want to hear, we want to have conversations.
Frank Butler 20:17
So we want to include your, your thoughts on these, if you know, we have a topic that we talked about and resonates with you, or you want to share your experience, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. And we will certainly bring that up and have that conversation to and include you guys into that conversation. But then you guys are probably wondering, well, if this is about business, why did you choose the title, the busyness? paradox?
Paul Harvey 20:45
We don't know
Frank Butler 20:46
We actually don't know. But really, this, this is actually an interesting conversation that we had, you know, the first thing we really got talking about a name, and actually just kind of ideas about the podcast was from personal experience. You know, it was something about work from home. And, you know, my wife has to go to the job two days of the week and work from home three days, but feels like those two days on don't actually do anything. And it really started getting to, it's like what was driving that and it realized, you know, when you're at the office, you really have to be, quote, unquote, on that whole time, you know, you have to give off that impression that you're working. Whereas when you're working from home, the reality is that you're not working all the time, right, you're getting to go up, you get some food, you go to the bathroom, you go outside for some fresh air, you check the mail, whatever, you know
Paul Harvey 21:36
You walk the dog, say hi to the neighbor
Frank Butler 21:38
Right. And at the end of the day, you're still getting the same amount of work done, right? You're just not filling your day, by looking busy yet you're still on Facebook, or something along those lines. And so that sort of got us going. Okay, so that's being busy at work, but not really being productive. And that sort of led to that notion of talking about busyness. And we're like, but if you really think about busyness is just one letter off from business. And that got us thinking, well, there has to be a reason for that. We ended up googling the etymology of business. I guess it turned out that we were right, right, it's they call it a doublet. So busyness and business are from the same root word,
Paul Harvey 22:20
This is so nerdy right now. So of course, we Google the etymology, as you do. As normal people do.
Frank Butler 22:29
But you know, we really wanted I think we didn't want it to be like the business paradox, because that's not what,
Paul Harvey 22:38
No, we didn't we didn't mean the business paradox. We meant the busyness paradox. Yeah. Acting busy when you're not really busy. And the whole host of similar strange things that we and everyone else does in the workplace. So tell us more. Why does the word business sound like busy-ness?
Frank Butler 22:59
Well, you know, I think what we figured out and you know, I might butcher the pronunciation, but we found that the root kind of basis for both business and business are busy, or business and business. And that dates back like, yeah, bazigness, right. It's kind of maybe we should have called it the bazigness paradox. But I think people would have said
Paul Harvey 23:19
Is it too late?
Frank Butler 23:21
you know, might not be
Paul Harvey 23:23
I'll just name my next dog bazigness.
Frank Butler 23:25
There you go.
Paul Harvey 23:27
Carry on.
Frank Butler 23:28
But you know, it's one of those that it's actually Old English or Middle English, or whatever they call it, but
Paul Harvey 23:33
Middle English, I believe.
Frank Butler 23:34
Yeah, I believe it's Middle English. I think you're right. But
Paul Harvey 23:36
you know, the whole idea of 15th centuries,
Frank Butler 23:38
what was it was big business really meant, like you were preoccupied, but it could also have met your occupation, too. Like somebody could be like, What business do you have or something like that? Or? And that
Paul Harvey 23:50
that was towards the later half of like, the millennium, they're like this 17th century-ish, or 1700s, I think is when it started to become semi synonymous with like, occupation.
Frank Butler 24:04
Right
Paul Harvey 24:05
Or trade
Frank Butler 24:06
Right? Yeah. I mean, you gotta think this word dates back to what the 14th century or something our 1400 or so I don't
Paul Harvey 24:11
The farthest back we could find it was the 1400s.
Frank Butler 24:14
I mean, that's crazy, right? I mean, just thinking that that word has been around and the evolution really does go through sort of one of the ideas of business was, it had meanings kind of like anxiousness, but not like anxious isn't like the mental health anxiety that people do experience, but more along the lines of that notion of restlessness or being preoccupied, which evolved into that notion of occupation. But also it also involved evolved into being busy because it's like it was his idea of your work of you're busy right. What do you what do you what keeps you busy, and it was supposed to be what work keeps you busy in a sense, and that was, again, I think, around the 1700s and then they started to split where we had business and then busy-NESS. And anyway, we thought it was good.
Paul Harvey 25:04
We thought like was just cool. But really, it's the notion of being busy. The notion of busyness is really what this podcast is about, right? It's often takes place in the context of business. But a lot of these topics are just as relevant to our charitable organization. A team, right?
Frank Butler 25:31
Yeah. And I think that's why we wanted to focus less on it being business and more kind of organizational in nature. And so busyness allows us that sort of, I think, flexibility to explore a lot more topics, even, you know, or approaches to topics,
Paul Harvey 25:46
and to focus on work, and or occupations, regardless of whether we identify those occupations with business or some other activity.
Frank Butler 25:57
That exactly, and I think it's important to point out too, that, you know, there's other words that are similar in a sense, but they kind of deal with that, too. You know, it's like business with the eye whereas businesses the why, but you can hear it in the way they're said though, right? Right. Happiness. Yes, business busyness. If we kept it truly to business bezig are busy too busy ness or business. It really would be happiness, silliness, craziness that is the same kind of spellings, but the way they change and businesses with an "I". So that's something to think about too. There's no y in that word. So I mean, there's a lot of little, you know, we geek out on it, because we thought it was so cool. But Paul and I have this tendency to really like to find acronyms are words that are play on words, just like when we create the waspishness, umbrageous sensitivity and insecurity scale.
Paul Harvey 26:58
AKA,
Frank Butler 26:59
WUSI
Paul Harvey 27:02
We'll talk about that. Yeah, we'll get some other time.
Frank Butler 27:05
We're working on maybe the popa scale or something along those lines. Yes. So anyway,
Paul Harvey 27:10
The papa-WUSI scale
Frank Butler 23:21
Actually, that would be interesting. Actually would go
Paul Harvey 27:16
It would. Oh my god.
Frank Butler 27:20
Brilliance my man.
Paul Harvey 27:21
Brilliant. See, we just captured gold.
Frank Butler 27:24
So anyway, you know, neither here nor there. Again, we're really excited about this. We're gonna we're gonna lay out some episodes here at the same time. And we're experimenting You know, this is one thing that we're trying to find what you guys resonate with, you know, the styles. We've got different styles that we started with. I mean, this has been a work in process. And so at the end of the day, we want to hear from you what you like, which versions of how we do things do you like better? Whatever I mean, there's work What do you want us to nerd out on for you? Exactly. And how you want us to nerd out what do you connect with the best So anyway, join us in that conversation. You know, go to busynessparadox.com or email us at busynessparadox at gmail dot com. Or find us at Twitter at busynessparadox.
Paul Harvey 28:20
We also like ghost stories
Frank Butler 28:21
We love ghost stories
Paul Harvey 28:22
And...just stop right there. The busyness paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from its business time by Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie. Also, be sure to visit our website, busynessparadox.com to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai