Calling a cab is a smart way to ensure that you have reliable transportation without having to deal with the hassles of parking. Calling two cabs, however, is potentially a disaster.

At first, it might seem like it’s a great idea to call two taxicabs from two different companies to schedule a pick up. Although each driver is probably highly reliable, there could be delays due to weather, traffic or mechanical issues. Placing two individual requests just seems like clever thinking.

However, if two cab drivers from different companies realize that they’ve been called out to retrieve the same passenger, they will often exchange a wave and drive off. That’s because each cab driver knows he has a 50-50 chance of the trip being a waste of time and total loss of the fare. They don’t want this to happen, so they punish the passenger by leaving them stranded.

This is the two-taxi problem. Calling one taxi might not work out, but calling two isn’t less risky—it’s disastrous. The reason that this strategy does not work is because it is inadvertently disrespectful. The passenger is telling both cab drivers he’s tremendously concerned about their reliability but still only willing to pay the standard rate.

The two-taxi problem pops up all of the time in business and personal life. Consider an email sent to multiple recipients via CC, asking if “anyone knows” the answer to a particular question. In effect, the message says: “One of you probably has the answer and I’m willing to waste everyone’s time to find out.” There’s not much incentive to reply to this message, since somebody else probably will.

Examples of the two-taxi problem can be easily identified when we give the same work to multiple people but ensure only one can receive the reward. If a company runs a monthly sales contest with only a prize for first place, why bother to work hard once it’s clear you are no longer the frontrunner? Why would a vendor go through a long request-for-proposal (RFP) process and generate dozens of pages of documentation if they know that the customer is simply required to get extra bids?

Moreover, the two-taxi problem shows that when we try to increase productivity, we end up ignoring the impact it has on stakeholders. It certainly seems more efficient to send a second reminder note about completing the survey to everyone, even if some of them have already completed the survey. But really, you are just wasting their time to save a few minutes of your own. And worse, you may make them second guess if they actually did the work or wonder if their results have been lost.

That’s because the two-taxi problem is an example of a productivity paradox. Calling two taxis is an idea that seems like a clever way to increase productivity but actually has the opposite effect. If you give the same task or the same information to multiple people, it’s entirely possible that the time you save will be far outweighed by the time you’ve wasted.

Learn more about ways to be more efficient, more effective and more satisfied at work without driving people away. Contact Slaughter Development for more information today!

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