The talk vs. make ratio

In any given week, do you spend more time talking about the thing or actually making the thing?

This is probably a fair measure of the velocity, or shipping speed, of the organisation you work in. Obviously excluding secondary roles like managers that are not actually building the thing.

There is some ambiguity and preference to this measure but I would personally argue that for core thing-makers (designers and developers, everything else is secondary) the ratio should be approaching 50/50.

If you spend much more than 50% of your time on talking about the thing, you are in an organisation that values the secondary over the primary and you should probably leave.

You could argue that the more time you spend making the better, but if you spend much more than 50% of your time on making the thing, however, you are in an organisation that treats you like an asset that has to make whatever is talked about without enough space for critical thinking, challenging or discussing execution. You shouldn’t want that either.