Tasks expand to fill the available time, turning quick jobs into drawn-out ordeals. Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." This one is essential for the time manager in leadership and every leader manages time. When leading change and doing new tasks that have unknown time requirements, the temptation is to set loose deadlines, assuming teams will finish efficiently on their own. Parkinson's Law reminds us that to combat this, we

Even well-laid plans can go awry in unexpected ways. Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." This critical concept dominates the "operational level" of work in any organization. Every day, as the leader, you get a report of everything that went wrong yesterday. It's your job to build systemic countermeasures to make sure whatever went wrong yesterday cannot go wrong again. Murphy's Law reminds us that our approach to process and adherence involves building a

Complex initiatives tend to break at a fundamental level. Gall's Law: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system." This one is essential for the process designer in leadership and every leader is a process designer. When leading change, the temptation is to map out every detail

A handful of people on your team carry most of the load. Price's Law - Half of the work in any domain is done by the square root of the total number of participants. Example: If your team has 100 people, Price's Law suggests just 10 of them produce 50% of the output. (Heads always start nodding when they see this example). This law absolutely applies to what I would call a "legacy" organization. If you've been hired to lead change, you probably face an organization which is f