Parkinson’s First Law:
Work expands or contracts in order to fill the time available.
Parkinson’s Second Law:
Expenditures rise to meet income.
Parkinson’s Third Law:
Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.
Parkinson’s Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
Parkinson’s Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
Parkinson’s Law of Delay:
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
Parkinson’s Law of Triviality:
The time spent in a meeting on an item is inversely proportional to its value (up to a limit).
Parkinson’s Law of 1,000:
An enterprise employing more than 1,000 people becomes a self-perpetuating empire, creating so much internal work that it no longer needs any contact with the outside world.
Parkinson’s Coefficient of Inefficiency:
The size of a committee or other decision-making body grows at which it becomes completely inefficient.
And other important adages…