Deep focus is essential for great productivity. Deliberate practice makes one better. But between meetings and catch-ups, ad-hoc tasks and random pings on the internal messenger system – where is the time?
By carving out time for important activities (not urgent ones) many efficient professionals get things done. But not everyone has the luxury to prioritise their activities and decline meetings. Even though Outlook and Gmail provide the functionality of scheduling blocks of time for focussed work.
Many of us have to go through the motions and make time for the important stuff by eating into other time blocks. Besides, what is a P0 task for me may not even be on the to-do list of my stakeholders. In this case even finding a middle ground is difficult. One may be pulled into various task forces and groups, even though the Ringelmann Effect is well proven. It simply states that the group productivity decreases as the size of the group increases.
Solving for high productivity therefore is not a factor of systems. This is where organisational culture can play a huge role. As architects of the org culture – the HR Team in partnership with the leadership team has a key role to play in the matter.
The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people. – John P. Kotter
This behaviour is rooted in years of conditioning. The systems and structures also act as enablers and reinforce a certain kind of chaos which is harmful to productivity.
Great organisations have proven strategies to reduce involvement of people in tasks that don’t directly concern them. For instance Amazon follows the rule of two pizzas. If two pizzas are not sufficient to feed the team then the team is too big.
Small empowered teams are often known to make high velocity decisions and learn from their experiments quickly. As compared to a large task force, which may spend an unnecessary time on achieving consensus, small nimble teams can deliver quickly. Promoting such team building and putting guard rails to avoid unnecessary bloat should be the task of the leadership team.
A solid culture of meeting discipline is the next best tool. Agenda led , sharply timed meetings can achieve a lot more than a long email full of instructions can. This needs to be demonstrated and enacted by the custodians of culture – the leadership and the HR Team. Moreover, the liberty to excuse oneself from a meeting where one is not a direct contributor is also useful most of the time. Tesla has a culture where one is allowed to decline meetings and accept the shortest path of communication to avoid delays. One is even encouraged to walk out of meetings which may not be useful to you.
And finally, it boils down to taking stock of how one’s time is spent. It helps to arrive at a workable framework which could be essential to audit your time. This form of a calendar audit is also made easy by tools like google calendar which tell you how much time you spent in meetings alone every day. I am not saying all meetings are bad but this is a good place to start taking stock. After such audits many companies have introduced the idea of a no-meeting day when all employees are encouraged to work independently and not get into any form of meetings.
Focus and discipline are critical. But so are the enabling systems and a supportive culture – which remains largely in the domain of the leadership and the HR team.