Office productivity: stop interruptions

In my blog Social Media: the perfect production killers, trigger by an announcement of a CEO, I mocked with his idea of replacing email in the office by social media solutions. Apart from the interesting resulting polemics I read, it made me think more general about the many reason why productivity in most offices is so low. Let's start with my personal Top-3 of productivity killers.

Meetings

4 out of 5 meetings are useless. They either are planned for the greater glory of the manager ("That's what I do: I call meetings…"), result of a habit ("We always meet weekly….") or assumed to have a positive impact on whatever ("It gives everybody a chance to express their ideas…"). Operational meetings should focus on operational things or decisions. Exchanging ideas, testing the water, bonding, bashing, politics and all other disturbing elements should be resolved otherwise. A typical weekly sales meeting wants to address this all: check progress on deals, bully the unsuccessful sales person, let Marketing present a new campaign. 10 people around the table of which everybody has on average contribution of 5 minutes per hour. Things that worked for me: - if a meeting has no clear target, don't hold it - more than 5 people makes no sense - if you can arrange it bi-lateral don't meet about it - only action lists, no notes - start on time, max 1 hour, stop on time Note: there should be focused time for non-operational things too: it's no problem to have a dedicated half day meeting on the required updates of a sales strategy but with an audience that can contribute and comes prepared.

Hierarchies

Every additional level in an organization will lead to at least 20% loss of total productivity in the chain. Every boss needs input and thus time from the level below in order to control them and to report to the level above. This is acceptable if it results in a wider span of activities for the whole organization. But mostly this is not what happens: every manager needs a reason to exist so will "offer" to "help" the team by procedures, meetings and other non-productive activities. Things that worked for me: - empower the employees and teams - manage by exception - a foreman is better than a dedicated manager - get out of your ivory management tower and be visible - lead instead of manage   

Email

The blessing of the email has flooded us for almost 20 years now, changing from a boundary sledging paperless office tool into the icon of the information overloaded office worker. Now under siege of a next incarnation called social media but in my prediction around for another 20 years at least. The credo: less is more! Things that worked for me: - create mail moments: fixed time slots with no other interference - don't read any mail unless you are one of the maximum three persons in the To-section - set aside mail that has no immediate contribution to the task you are performing now - don't store informational mails for later reading; they either fit now or will ruin your weekends - limit subscriptions to internal status updates, bulletin boards, newsletters to those that are contributing to your primary tasks All productivity killers, also those outside of my Top-3, have one thing in common: they create unnecessary interruptions. Some of them can be easily influenced on a personal level; some require a change of culture. But even small steps can have a dramatic improvement: every interruption creates not only its own loss but also impacts the restart of the interrupted activity. Thus every interruption less has a double effect. As always, comment welcomed.