Is the Modern Company Suffering from Operational Obesity?

For years, growth meant addition: more people, more processes, more systems, more controls, more meetings, more metrics, and more layers of management.
Each addition seemed justifiable in isolation. A new report to improve tracking. A meeting to boost alignment. A tool to organize requests. An extra approval step to mitigate risk. A new process to fix a failure.
The problem arises when no one revisits what was added.
The organization keeps piling on structures until it reaches a point where a significant portion of its energy is consumed simply by sustaining its own operations.
We can call this phenomenon “operational obesity”: an organization that has accumulated processes, controls, tools, and activities far beyond what is necessary to create value.
It isn’t necessarily underworking.
It is carrying too much weight.

1. When growth becomes accumulation
Operational obesity rarely stems from a single, major misguided decision.
It builds up slowly.
• a recurring meeting that was never questioned again
• a report created for a need that no longer exists
• a tool that ended up coexisting with three others
• an approval step added after a one-off issue
• a process that accumulated so many exceptions it became incomprehensible
• a new management layer created to coordinate another layer
The result is a company that keeps adding resources without eliminating what has lost its usefulness.
McKinsey highlighted in 2025 that simply altering organizational structures is not enough to capture sustainable productivity gains. Processes and behaviors need to be simplified end-to-end; otherwise, costs and inefficiencies tend to creep back in.
The strategic question shifts from merely “what do we need to add?” to also include “what do we no longer need to do?”

2. A key symptom: working on the work
Perhaps one of the best indicators of operational obesity is the amount of energy required just to manage the work itself. It is the time spent:
• searching for information
• updating statuses
• asking about progress
• filling out tracking logs
• attending follow-up meetings
• switching between tools
• coordinating activities that should flow naturally
Asana calls this phenomenon “work about work.” In a survey of knowledge workers, the company indicates that around 60% of time can be consumed by activities of this nature, rather than the specialized work for which people were hired.
This data changes the conversation about productivity.
Perhaps the company doesn’t simply need to get people to produce more.
Perhaps it needs to eliminate some of the work that exists solely because operations have become overly complex.

3. Operational obesity also clogs up schedules
An organization can appear extremely productive at first glance.
Schedules are packed.
Messages keep pouring in.
Projects are underway.
Dashboards are being updated.
Teams are constantly busy.
But being busy is not synonymous with creating value.
Asana itself found that senior leaders lost an average of 3.6 hours a week just on meetings deemed unnecessary.
When this happens repeatedly, meetings cease to be tools for decision-making and instead serve to compensate for a lack of visibility into operations.
The company has to constantly ask what is happening because it cannot see the work clearly.

4. Technology can also bloat operations
Digitization should mean simplification.
It doesn’t always work out that way.
With every operational problem comes the temptation to add a new tool.
Over time, the employee ends up working across:
• email
• messaging apps
• corporate systems
• project platforms
• dashboards
• spreadsheets
• video conferencing
• AI tools
The result can be a sophisticated technological architecture accompanied by a fragmented operational experience. Microsoft telemetry data shows that Microsoft 365 users can be interrupted—by meetings, emails, or notifications—on average every two minutes during core working hours. The research also indicated that 48% of employees and 52% of leaders described their work as chaotic and fragmented.
Technology ceases to eliminate friction when it begins to generate friction itself.

5. The greatest danger is normalizing excess
“Operational obesity” has a particularly dangerous characteristic: over time, no one notices it exists anymore.
Phrases like these become part of the culture:
• “We’ve always done it this way.”
• “That meeting has always existed.”
• “We need to copy everyone.”
• “That report needs to be sent.”
• “It’s better to keep that approval step.”

Individually, these seem like small decisions.
Collectively, they build a bloated organization.
And the longer this excess persists, the harder it becomes to distinguish what truly creates value from what has simply become routine.

6. The impact shows in decision-making speed
A bloated operation must go through more stages to get things moving.
A simple decision might depend on:
• more people
• more information
• more validations
• more meetings
• more approvals
This increases the time between spotting a problem and acting on it.
In recent analyses of organizational simplification, McKinsey highlights the need to reduce low-value work, accelerate decisions, and redesign operating models to tackle increasingly complex environments.
In other words, simplification is no longer just a cost-cutting initiative.
It has become a matter of competitiveness.

7. AI can solve operational obesity—or make it even worse

This issue takes on particular importance in the era of Artificial Intelligence.

AI offers immense capacity for automating activities.

But there is a question that must be asked before automation:

Should this activity exist in the first place?

Automating an unnecessary report does not eliminate waste.

Automating a bureaucratic step does not necessarily improve the process.

Using AI to speed up a flawed workflow might simply allow the company to generate waste more quickly.

Before automating, organizations need to understand.

Before adding technology, they need to identify where the friction lies.

Before accelerating, they need to know where their operational energy is going.

8. Agile companies don’t do less; they eliminate what doesn’t create value.

A lean operation does not mean an organization without processes, controls, or technology.

It means an organization capable of distinguishing necessary structure from accumulated bloat. This requires continuous monitoring of:

• where time is being consumed

• which activities absorb the most effort

• where recurring interruptions occur

• which teams are overburdened

• where bottlenecks arise

• how the workday is distributed

• which patterns precede a drop in efficiency

The company begins to treat operational capacity as a strategic resource.

And, above all, it stops assuming that more structure automatically means more control.

9. Productivity Radar: before adding, discover what to remove

This is precisely where Productivity Radar plays a strategic role.

The platform transforms signals from daily work routines into objective indicators, allowing managers, leaders, and HR to better understand how the organization’s capacity is being utilized.

Instead of relying solely on perceptions, one-off surveys, or manual controls, Radar facilitates a continuous reading of operations.

With Radar, the company can:

• track productivity and workday indicators

• compare patterns across periods, teams, and contexts

• identify signs of overload and lack of focus

• better understand activity distribution throughout the workday

• pinpoint opportunities for operational improvement

• provide evidence for decisions made by leaders and HR

• support more objective, data-driven management

The major shift lies in the question asked.

Instead of:

“Do we need to hire more people?”

“Do we need another tool?”

“Do we need to create another control mechanism?”

Leadership can start by asking:

“Where is our current capacity being consumed?”

This question might reveal that the next leap in productivity doesn’t depend on adding something.

It might depend on removing things.

Less noise.

Less redundancy.

Less unnecessary complexity.

More capacity dedicated to what truly matters.

Because an efficient company isn’t the one that can carry the heaviest load.

It is the one that knows exactly what it no longer needs to carry.