leftovers #2 - it doesn't have to be crazy at work (interruptions, meetings)

I've written a couple of recent posts about It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, but it turns out I have a handful of other comments about the book. Let's have a look today at interruptions, which follows closely from the theme of the first leftover, time management. The authors reference interruptions in two ways - the first is the spontaneous sort such as a colleague dropping by (or these days, using chat tools) and the second is the lazily scheduled meeting. The shared consequence of these disruptions is the way they can slice up otherwise unbroken blocks of time. This is a particularly dangerous phenomenon for anyone who requires unbroken time to complete meaningful work. I suppose it could be compared to a baker constantly pulling the bread in and out of the oven, but unlike with bread - if it was baked incorrectly, we can taste the difference - with work it's often unclear in retrospect if the product would have improved with a more focused approach.

There is little, it seems, that can be done by the constantly interrupted individual, and the authors seem to agree - their solutions are at the leadership level of an organization. One possibility is to implement an office hours policy, which would allow each employee to set fixed hours for ad-hoc questions. Another option is to precisely define the necessary conditions for calling a meeting. If possible, the culture should encourage replacing a meeting with a written update or summary, particularly if the topic at hand is more along the lines of delivering news rather than completing work. As noted in the past on TOA, there are two good times for a meeting. The first is when it's unclear how the work will get done; the purpose is to make a decision. The second is to discuss issues that do not come up naturally during the workweek, which I feel requires the unstructured nature of a recurring conversation.