July 2010
Friends,
Perhaps the
best part of freelance consulting is that you get to do
many different interesting things, and you get to choose them...
The latest addition here is a client who brought me in to help
with getting a handle on the fascinating question of how to
integrate the three generations - Baby Boomers, Gen X and the
newly arriving Gen Y - into a single workforce that empowers
them to be their best while interacting harmoniously and helping
each other. If you have insight in this field, do write me and
let's exchange views.
Cheers,
This issue's theme:
Original and
unique IO solutions
Large programs to solve productivity issues
tend to follow similar lines in different companies, but now and
then you bump into Something Completely Different, a
solution invented by an individual manager with out of the box
thinking that pushes the envelope. These tend to be simple,
radical and original, and have a deep impact. For example,
consider that bane of the corporate world, Ineffective Meetings:
the usual course is to set meeting norms and educate the
workforce... but then you hear of the manager in a US company
who simply ordered all chairs removed from the conference rooms:
simple, dramatic, and sure to result in short, focused meetings.
In this issue I will share some original solutions I've
encountered in Information Overload space.
What YOU can do about it
If you want
a really original solution you should invent your own... but
here are a few examples I've seen that may give you ideas:
- The CEO of a small VLSI company completely banned
cellphones from the company's building. You could use a cell
on the road, but in the building you had to turn it off to
allow people the luxury of focused thinking.
- In a twist on the same idea, Barack Obama forces all
attendees in his cabinet meetings to leave their
BlackBerries in a basket at the door.
- A start up in Israel set up a repository on its Intranet
for all the jokes, links, and other "check this" type emails
circulating in the company. Anyone wanting to share a joke
would mail it to an admin who uploaded it to the "Joke
Space", and anyone feeling glum could go take a look. This
reduced mail traffic to everyone's advantage.
- A number of companies, most famously the Nielsen
company, removed the infamous Reply to All button from the
Outlook interface. Employees can of course cut and paste the
addresses, but the second of delay makes them think...
reducing distributions to sanity.
- Even before email, there were smart managers who made it
known they'll reject a subordinate's memo if it exceeded a
single page in length.
In return:
if you know any similar stories yourself, send them
over, and I'll share them on the
blog!
Analysis and Opinion
This kind of solutions may seem quirky, but
they transmit a powerful message. Coming from a senior manager
(as they have to, in order to get traction) they show that
reducing info overload is important to that manager, a key
prerequisite to changing culture and behavior. Their
psychological impact therefore exceeds their immediate effect.
The best such solutions become a part of a company's culture,
something to brag about when describing "the way we do things
around here" to a visitor or a candidate for hire. If you're the
manager initiating the practice, you may be able to influence
this outcome...
Solutions and Resources
You can't
buy these one-off solutions.. but you can invent them, and you
can emulate the ones you hear of, possibly after modifying them
to your needs. To help get the word around, I share solutions in
my
blog posts and on my
Twitter account - you're welcome to subscribe to both.
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Original solutions exist outside of Productivity space too.
Here's a beautiful one: A little known design aspect
of the Apollo Lunar Lander module is that it had no seats
for the crew. Weight and space were so tightly constrained
that the heavy, bulky chairs became a showstopper; and then
someone at NASA had the inspiration: the trip from the
orbiter to the moon was so brief that the crew could easily
pass it on their feet, standing at the controls. Just
because every manned spacecraft ever built had had seats,
didn't mean this one should!  |
