Archive for March, 2010

Work anywhere: is it good or bad for balancing our lives?

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 28, 2010
in Analysis and Opinion
. 0 Comments

In the late nineties I found myself involved in a variety of Work/Life Balance initiatives at Intel. I had led Intel to adopt Telecommuting practices and although I’d proven that [one day per week] work from home had significant productivity benefits, the benefit for employees’ life was pretty obvious too. The ability to work remotely was clearly helping people balance their lives.

Then came a new decade, and with it the ubiquity of mobile devices and wireless connectivity, and it became apparent that the same ability was being overused and abused by knowledge workers to the point that 24×7 work was clobbering their leisure, family life and – through mounting stress – their health. “Work anywhere” was beginning to look not so great for balance: back before mobile computing you went home and that was pretty much that as far as working that day. Not any more!

And yet, suggest to people giving up the ability to connect from home, and you may well have a mutiny on your hands. Part of the problem is that with many knowledge workers in global corporations, the realities of time zones require them to stay in touch with people during all hours; and as I discovered myself when still working in a cube farm, it is far less disruptive if you can go home, have dinner with your family, and then dial into a teleconference from home, than to stay in the office till late at night. Furthermore, until we find a cure for workaholism – don’t hold your breath on that one – people will truly benefit from the ability to engage with their workload whenever it suits them. I’ve seen this often: managers are eager to cure unnecessary overwork, by solving email overload and related problems, but they are sincerely in favor of allowing work from home after hours, because they see it as a flexibility benefit.

Given this situation, what we may really need to figure out is new and innovative ways to reduce stress and enable employees to live their lives well. We should assume that there will not be a clear work/life barrier like the proverbial 5PM one in the classic “9-to-5” workplace; accept that work and life will remain inextricably meshed in the foreseeable future; and move on to adapt to this state of affairs. What we may need is to extend “Work anywhere, anytime” to coexist with “Live anywhere, anytime”, with both halves of the equation having an equal footing.

What do you think?

Computers in Health Care – Take 2

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 22, 2010
in Impact and Symptoms
. 2 Comments

I mentioned in a recent post Lesa Becker’s study of the impact of computer adoption on hospital personnel. Well, I was visiting in a hospital the other day and noticed the wheeled computer the doctors were lugging around to patients’ beds, so I asked staff members whether the move to computerized patient records is a boon or a bane.

Opinions varied as to the time impact: all agreed it takes longer to use, with older folks feeling more affected than younger ones; but I was surprised with the reply of the head nurse. She replied with an emphatic condemnation of the technology, but for her it was not a matter of efficiency or more work. Her answer was short: “with a computer, you look at the screen instead of at the patient!”

This is indeed an interesting opinion, which was corroborated by the attending doctor. The computer provides a great deal of useful information about the patient, which can be shared and retrieved reliably, as another nurse had pointed out; yet at the same time it keeps the patient out of focus. In fact,  given that time spent at each bed was dictated by the hospital’s workload, I couldn’t help noticing that the doctors were spending a significant fraction of that precious time pounding the keyboard. An unexpected side effect of the race to get more information; and another proof that more information is not always necessarily better.

This is indeed an interesting opinion, which was corroborated by the attending doctor. The computer provides a great deal of useful information about the patient, which can be shared and retrieved reliably, as another nurse had pointed out; yet at the same time it keeps the patient out of focus. In fact, given that time spent at each bed was dictated by the hospital’s workload, I couldn’t help noticing that the doctors were spending a significant fraction of that precious time pounding the keyboard. An unexpected side effect of the race to get more information; and another proof that more information is not always necessarily better.

Nathan’s First Tip for fighting email overload

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 17, 2010
in Individual Solutions
. 0 Comments

To completely stop email overload, you need to tailor a complete organizational solution; you can get some ideas for that on my site. But I find that many people derive value by implementing some simple individual measures, and I often get asked what the best of these are.

So here, for your enjoyment, is my favorite first tip, the one you should take if you were to take one tip  only to the proverbial desert island (assuming they had WiFi on the island):

Only check your email in preset time slots each day.

This seemingly obvious idea is actually powerful medicine. It directly attacks the Inbox addiction that makes countless people check for new messages every few minutes around the clock; which removes a major source of interruptions from the hectic lifestyle of this “age of the Blackberry”. This empowers you to focus your mind and work on creative action. It also saves a significant amount of time, since doing work in short chopped chunks adds up to 40% to the total time they take.

There are two technical details to this. First, there’s the question of when in the day to do the email processing? That is really up to you. A good idea is to steer clear of the times when your biological rhythms render you more creative. Then there are considerations of work rhythms: if you interact with a distant time zone, you may need a mail check first thing in the morning. But the main thing is to have a few (1 – 4) fixed, preset slots and to have the self-discipline to stick with them.

Second, you must stop the incoming messages from coming after you! This means removing all the alerts that announce new email arrival: the audible beeps, the “toast” message boxes (so called because they pop up like bread from a toaster, at least in Outlook), the little envelope in the task bar, and so forth. These can be turned off in your email Options – better go turn them off right now!

Are you already doing this? If so, share your choice of times and your experience in the comments.

To completely stop email overload, you need to tailor a complete organizational solution; you can get some ideas for that on my site. But I find that many people derive value by implementing some simple individual measures, and I often get asked what the best of these are.

So here, for your enjoyment, is my favorite first tip, the one you should take if you were to take one tip only to the proverbial desert island (assuming they had WiFi on the island):

Only check your email in preset time slots each day.

This seemingly obvious idea is actually powerful medicine. It directly attacks the Inbox addiction that makes countless people check for new messages every few minutes around the clock; which removes a major source of interruptions from the hectic lifestyle of this “age of the Blackberry”. This empowers you to focus your mind and work on creative action. It also saves a significant amount of time, since doing work in short chopped chunks adds up to 40% to the total time they take.

There are two technical details to this. First, there’s the question of when in the day to do the email processing? That is really up to you. A good idea is to steer clear of the times when your biological rhythms render you more creative. Then there are considerations of work rhythms: if you interact with a distant time zone, you may need a mail check first thing in the morning. But the main thing is to have a few (1 – 4) fixed, preset slots and to have the self-discipline to stick with them.

Second, you must stop the incoming messages from coming after you! This means removing all the alerts that announce new email arrival: the audible beeps, the “toast” message boxes (so called because they pop up like bread from a toaster, at least in Outlook), the little envelope in the task bar, and so forth. These can be turned off in your email Options – better go turn them off right now!

Are you already doing this? If so, share your choice of times and your experience in the comments.

In the wrong hands, IT tools can reduce productivity!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 11, 2010
in Analysis and Opinion
. 6 Comments

The argument about Information Technology’s benefit to the enterprise seems silly: of course having computers, both in isolation and on a network, has added huge value to industry and business; indeed, they are as pivotal a game changer as the steam engine, the printing press, or (dare I say it?) the wheel. And yet, the discussion is legitimate if you frame it correctly: yes, computers are good in general, but is any specific, given additional IT tool of benefit?

In many cases this depends on who the organization assigns it to. You’ve probably noticed this when visiting a doctor at a clinic: I’ve seen many an MD cursing under their breath while struggling to enter my examination data and conclusions into a new computerized system. Instead of scribbling a few illegible lines on paper and chucking it into a manila file, to be processed later by an assistant, they had to use an unfamiliar and possibly ill-designed piece of technology, and it took them much longer. And because of this they had less time to apply their real value added, their precious ability to cure the sick.

A more formal view on this is described by IORG member Dr. Lesa Becker, whose PhD dissertation examined the use of computers in a health care setting: she found that usually a new IT system introduced into the workplace resulted in increased overload and reduced manager productivity. Why? Because as new software products were implemented, the role definition of managers would change – clerical tasks that had been performed by low-level clerks and administrative assistants would be shifted to managers, taking time away from higher-level tasks like managing processes, mentoring subordinates, etc. I’ve seen this happen over the years in Hi-Tech as well: many mid-level managers today handle – with the help of software – numerous bureaucratic tasks, like compiling expense reports and setting up meetings, that 20 years ago would have been in the hands of the then-ubiquitous secretaries and clerks.

I think this is a real problem, which follows the usual pattern with new technology: it gets deployed with little attention to the wider implications. Thus, if a tool enables the manager or engineer to do the admin’s work, the temptation to remove the admin and become “lean” and “efficient” is great. But the fact is, an admin is paid much less than a highly skilled engineer or manager (or surgeon); and the latter only has so many hours in a day, which may be better used for doing higher level tasks. This is not to say that we can’t streamline some of the work by having it done by the manager; the question is which part, and to what extent. As is often the case, it’s pretty much about identifying the correct balance.

I propose that if we want to reap the full benefit of IT tools, we should take a holistic view of their impact. Only after we understand the alternatives should we decide who should use them, and how. If we keep the right tools in the right hands, and maintain the right expectations, we can derive real productivity increases without sacrificing our knowledge workers’ effectiveness in their main role.

What do you think? Is it any different where you work?

Does anyone notice the red “Importance” icon in Outlook?

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 7, 2010
in Analysis and Opinion
. 3 Comments

Much of Email is about attention. The sender of an email wants to secure the attention of the recipient long enough for them to read and understand the message; the recipient, usually inundated with mail, may be unwilling or unable to react to every message in their Inbox. Thus, it is up to the sender to grab a chunk of the recipient’s limited stock of attention. In particular, if a message is truly important, the sender wants the recipient to realize this.

Outlook offers a way to mark the importance of a message, by setting its importance to High. This is the setting that attaches the familiar red exclamation point icon to the message in the Inbox. I always wondered, however, how effective this is: do the recipients become jaded and stop paying attention to the red icons? Do senders prefer more in-your-face methods, like setting a “Follow up flag” that will pop up an alert when the message arrives?

There is also the opposite of the red exclamation mark: the down-pointing blue arrow icon that denotes low importance. Sadly, this is very rarely used: who wants to tell the recipient a message is not important? And this is why when I get one of these, I always pay attention to the message: I figure that if a friend has taken the trouble of notifying me it isn’t urgent, at least it must be worth reading, or this considerate sender wouldn’t have sent it…

I’d like to hear from you, my readers: what is your take on the red Importance icon? Do you rely on it? Let us know in the comments!

Four ways to make Information Overload solutions acceptable to employees

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on March 3, 2010
in Organizational Solutions
. 0 Comments

Solving Information Overload is one of the highest-ROI actions an enterprise can embark on. With knowledge workers losing about one day a week to this issue, anything that will reclaim them that time is bound to repay itself very rapidly for the company, while improving the victims’ quality of life. There’s just one potential pitfall: some of the organizational solutions available may seem restrictive or oppressive to at least some employees, and that may limit their success. It is important to make the solutions acceptable to the very people they are trying to help!

Here are some ideas for achieving this acceptance:

  1. Involve the employee base from the very start. That may be the biggest predictor of a successful IO program. Announce your intent to tackle the program early, before the solutions are a done deal! In one company I know this was achieved by the organization’s top manager blogging about his intention to address IO in his internal blog, which drew many enthused responses.

    If you set up a team to define solutions, consider including in it employees from all layers in the hierarchy, to give your users a voice.

  2. Collect ideas for solutions from your employees, thereby securing both their help and their commitment, while giving your program visibility. At Intel IT we held an employee contest for ideas, complete with prizes; we got hundreds of submissions, many quite insightful, and the ensuing program was a great success.
  3. If the solution is radical, try it out first in a Pilot team. This carefully chosen and motivated team will be more likely to succeed, and the outcome – if it is positive – will be easier to sell to the rest of the organization.
  4. Be sensitive – and creative! For example, consider the way the VP of Marketing at Veritas software implemented a “No Email on Friday” ban. He went so far as to fine  anyone who sent an email that day with $1. That should have caused a big outcry, but instead it was accepted and fondly remembered years later by the employees as a fun program. How come? Because the VP had the wisdom to have the fines go to charity, and to let the employees decide which charity it would be; and he played the whole thing lightly and with a sense of humor, going so far as to put up “wanted” posters for repeat offenders…

If you have any success stories we can learn from, share them in the comments!