• Don’t buy supplies. Workers often think they need things to do their jobs but they’re always wrong
• Make the lights flicker. By flickering the lights continually, you save 50% on electric bills without major loss of visibility
• Deny PTO requests. It doesn’t cost anything to have employees work through their vacation. You’re already paying for that time, might as well get some productivity out of it.
• Salary = 24/7 employee. By paying your R&D staff per year, you can extract a year’s worth of productivity every year. The sleepless delerium is good for creativity
• Skip the R. Research doesn’t make you any money. It’s the Development of new products that makes new money. Order your employees to Skip the R, which consumes a significant portion of R&D budgets
• Creative bonuses. A pizza party is bonus enough. Everybody loves pizza, and when they see you come in with that piping hot goodness it hacks their brains into liking you even more
• Lead the charge. Polls show that C- and mid-level management can find creative ways to help the process along, and often while skipping large portions of unnecessary work, by spending time showing R&D staff how it’s done
• Coordinate often. Further polls show that the number one reason things take too long is that nobody is asking for progress reports. Progress reports are best delivered in person, in the presence of the entire team. Zoom and other tools can support up to 3500 meeting participants, but even better is to clear out any lab space for a regular all-hands meeting. SCRUM stands for Standing Creatively, Reassessing the Utility of Meetingless time

You have to get a little creative to slash those R&D budgets, but in the long run it can pay off in terms of bonuses and promotions. Getting noticed by even higher management is important. You got this!