I have worked at several companies over my career. I started as an engineer in 2005, and messaging (Skype or Teams) was unavailable until 2012. Now, we use messaging all the time, but it does not seem like my company gets any more done than the companies I worked in before. We are just more…
Some Tasks Will Go Away
Building on last week’s post, be careful when planning your tasks too far in the future or believing that everything on your task list will need to be done. Over time, priorities change, and you cannot predict what will be important in the future. Many tasks will no longer be important, and you can remove…
Let Yourself Off The Hook
“I think Type A people have a Type B problem, and Type B people have a Type A problem.” -Chris Williamson Many of us have a days-long to-do list that we chip away at every day. We add a few minutes to each work day trying to get one more thing on the list checked…
The Administrator Class
I regularly wonder why we have so many additional projects and tasks on top of the business’s primary goal. Are all of these additional activities value-added or just noise over time? I believe part of this is the administrator class in an organization. These people in the business are responsible for managing and coordinating the…
Two Concepts on Delegation
I struggle with delegation. I feel that it is my responsibility, but my logical side realizes that I am hindering their development and my ability to produce in my role. Here are a couple of concepts that I have been considering. Consider the military; young adults are given enormous responsibility, even over other’s lives. They…
Two More Problems WIth Email
Two additional complications make asynchronous communication (email) contentious and inefficient. First, the participants have to remember the past discussion amidst all of the other thoughts and discussions they have had in between the replies possibly forgetting key pieces. Second, the amount of data transfer is lower than synchronous communication (phone, face-to-face) so the participants will…
Someone Should Do Something
Before I became a manager I felt confident in improving how my work was done. Now as a manager, people bring me problems they feel should be fixed. This is interesting to me because many of these problems were the ones I would fix for myself. I still would like to fix these problems but…
I Wish They Would Leave Me Alone So I Can Do My Job
Have you ever wondered why your management did not see a problem beforehand? Are you tired of giving updates to management? Have you ever identified something that needed fixing but your manager did nothing about it? We are are part of a team which is made up of imperfect people with competing priorities and limited…
Feeling Okay About Tasks Left Undone
I think we are partially to blame for the frantic hurry-hurry-hurry culture where we work. Many of us cannot deal with the feeling of things left undone, making us anxious. To alleviate the feeling we bundle it up as the next action for someone else and throw it over the fence in the form of…
Self-directed projects are hard.
It is easy to fight fires and answer emails. You don’t have to think about what to do, you just execute. There is no planning or discipline required. It is easy to display to others that you are working hard. You can justify work on these urgent tasks. You are just doing your job and…
Units of Attention
You only have a certain quantity of attention units every day. Be careful that they are not consumed doing the low-value work. They are also consumed by switching tasks.
What Would Your Manager Do?
Sometimes when I am stuck on a problem, I ask myself “How would my manager solve this” to expand my thinking. I try to avoid bothering my manager with problems I can solve. I even reach out to my manager’s peers to let them know they can come directly to me when my manager is…
Someone should fix that
Did you identify a problem? Maybe you should fix it. Be careful thinking “Someone should fix it”. There are a lot of things that should be fixed not all of them should be fixed right now.
Managers Cast a Shadow
As managers, we need to realize that we cast a shadow. We must be careful what we say to our team members because it may confuse or scare them. For instance, asking about an activity may lead a team member to believe it is a priority for them. Sometimes that shadow we cast is of…
Accumulation of Complexity to Reduce Risk
I recently listened to a podcast where Lex Friedman interviewed Elon Musk and they discussed Musk’s five-step process for problem-solving with emphasis on step two “Delete a part or a process” where he explains that you need to delete so much that you have to put something back. As an engineer, this makes me uncomfortable…
Apply Musk’s Manufacturing Process to Knowledge Work
Elon Musk has a process he uses for manufacturing. What if we applied these to knowledge work processes?
Reduce Meetings by Implementing Teired Meetings Brainstorming
We have too many meetings and emails because tier meetings are not working. I want to fix this in my organization and this is a bit of a brainstorming post to solve this. Tiered meetings can significantly improve the productivity of an organization as long as they are implemented correctly and the standard process fits…
We Need to Get Better at Measuring Knowledge-Work Productivity
How do you know if you are doing enough at work? How are you doing compared to your peers? I wish I had an effective way to measure our productivity in knowledge work but this is a very hard problem to solve. Though, as managers, I don’t think we have really tried to figure this…
Sometimes We Need Meetings, Sometimes We Don’t
We have too many meetings but every meeting is created to meet a need. Often, we don’t define the need (or purpose) of the meeting before setting it or consider that there may be a better way to meet that need. Acceptable Purposes for Meetings: Not so Acceptable Purposes (some may be acceptable for the…
I Believe Work Can Be Better
This is not the most coherent post but a collection of thoughts to help explain why I am interested in how we work. I am not interested in getting more done. It just happens to be the byproduct of making work suck less. I don’t like being stressed out about work, being hurried, and pestered…