This is the way it works.
          Shareholders put pressure on the Board of Directors to jack up the price of the company’s stock.  The Board of Directors has a “come-to-the-stock altar” meeting with the company president informing him/her that some changes have to be made to impress the bricks off Wall Street.  The company president mandates all of his/her VP’s to cut budgets so the investors are impressed with efforts at efficiency.  And, the VP’s start cutting people, paper clips and postage.
          Sound familiar?
          Then, to add insult to injury, some management person will lead the office in the rousing refrain, “Happy Days Are Here Again….”
It is my opinion that this hackneyed, unimaginative slash n’ burn method of improving corporate profits is shortsighted and incredibly unproductive.  But, doing more with less is the mantra of the millennium and there are few of us who have the political capital to reverse the trend. 
So, I am suggesting you work on what you can influence and refuse the easy choice of incessantly moaning over half empty cups of coffee in some windowless break room.
Here, then, are the benefits of doing business by doing more with less.
First, increasing efficiency will pop to the surface those things that your business has been doing that everyone knows is a colossal waste of time.
Come on, is it not true that you and your colleagues know of departments and processes that, when pressed, cannot come up with one good reason why they still exist?
“Because we have always done it” will wilt in the heat of doing more with less.
Second, the habitually unproductive people who have been hiding in your bureaucracy will start blipping on the sonar of doing more with less. 
Notice the people I am describing, “habitually unproductive.”  These folks have worked the system until they have crafted a niche of nice nothingness.  When you think about the “value” they bring to work every day, you are left mumbling platitudes that include, “They are good people,” and “Their heart is in the right place.”
Who cares about their heart?  You are left holding the business bag if they refuse to bring their brains to work tomorrow.
Third, doing more with less should be “more” for everyone. 
When your staff begins to work out of their passion instead of their
penchant for pediatric game-playing, productivity always soars.
          Ask yourself this question, “Right now, what percentage (100 percent is the potential) of my creativity and ability am I bringing to work every day?”  It is my experience that the average honest person will respond, “about 30 to 40 percent.”  Do you know any “bored” people at work?
          I am suggesting that there should be episodic, monetary motivation for achieving short-term goals in a downsized workplace.  If there are fewer people and resources, productivity gains should be easy to quantify.
          If these three positive outcomes for doing more with less have any merit, then the following practical steps should be taken by your organization to do more with less…and be happy about it.

1. Outlaw any further whining about doing more with less.  This angst is unproductive and does not produce any positive changes.
2. Create psychological safety for frontline staff to identify the processes and systems in your workplace that do not add “value” to your bottom line.
3. Clarify with management who will make the decision about whether or not unproductive systems will survive.
4. Appropriately lobby for financial incentives to accompany short-term productivity goals.
5. Celebrate, with lots of balloons and bragging, that you not only mastered doing more with less, but also enjoyed the process.

Doing more with less is really about the satisfaction of challenging…you.  I don’t want to get weepy in the final lines of this article, but if you do pull off doing more with less it just means you reached down deeply inside of yourself and probably surprised yourself with some really good stuff. 
Now, there is a reason to be “happy.”