In Michael Pollan’s fascinating book The Omnivore’s Dilemma (not an affiliate link), he points out that in the US, it takes between seven and ten calories of energy (in growing, processing, preparing and distributing the food) to put one calorie of food on your plate. Frighteningly inefficient, huh?
Well, turns out there’s a similar management ‘energy conversion ratio’ at work in every organization.
Likely you have a manager, a peer or a team member whose energy conversion ratio is higher than 1:1 – someone, in other words, in whom you have to invest five, seven, ten times more energy in managing them, than the organization gets back in return.
You know who they are. So what are you going to do about it?