I normally like to Blog about what I perceive as real business issues and solutions. Sometimes I can’t help myself and propeller off into a different area. This is one of those times.
It used to be that my business email was almost pristine in terms of the types of messages and content that I received. I only got business emails and items that were germane to the work I needed to do. I understand that this must have been an anomaly in today’s electronic communications environment. The same could not be said about my personal email. I don’t know how I could have possibly won both the Ethiopian and Kenyan lotteries last month. The odds of something like that must be really astronomical, especially since I don’t remember entering either of them. However, until recently, my business address was relatively free of these types of opportunities.
That isn’t the case any more.
While I am not getting the rather colorful pharmaceutical, friendship and foreign lottery opportunities that I do get in my personal inbox, I now seem to be getting a plethora “business” trade shows, seminars, “bulletins” and symposium opportunities to either attend (for a hefty fee) or subscribe to (for another fee). It takes a set of notifications like these to actually inform me of many superfluous industry meetings and publications there are out there. They seem to exist for just the purpose of getting people to attend / buy them without any other redeeming qualities.
Am I the only one that feels this way about them?
The question now turns to who is providing my business email to these “Spammers”. It’s not me. Why would I want to commit any act that would knowingly subject me to this type of ultimately useless barrage of seminar and white paper opportunities? It has to be someone that is deriving some sort of twisted pleasure in befouling my here to fore relatively useful business email. When I check around it seems that it is possible that I might have in fact been the last person on the internet with any type of mail address that was not receiving useless unrequested mailbox clutter of this type.
It is said that “misery loves company”, so I am trying to figure out who the miserable jerk was that put me on some list that got all this started. I am convinced that all these spam lists are related. First I got just an occasional useless message. There was nothing to it. I just deleted it. Then it started to grow.
I didn’t respond to any of the messages. They must have been communicating with each other. There must be some sort of secret spammer society where they meet, (virtually? electronically? in person?) to exchange the addresses of their latest, and in my case last victim to receive their onslaught. It has truly gotten out of hand.
My mail system does a reasonable job of trying to sort out some of the junk email from the rest. I believe that it must be set according to the number of recipients in the email address. At least that would explain why every announcement from our senior executives (and HR) end up in the same Junk Mail folder as my most recent opportunity to attend an industry seminar in Miami, Florida, to go over the proper steps in justifying to senior management why it is important to attend industry seminars.
Some days I now come in and my Junk Mail folder rivals my Inbox folder for new messages, and by the time I sort out those that should be moved to Junk Mail, it is not even close.
I understand that there is a law where if you take the active step to “unsubscribe” to the email sender, they will stop sending you email….from that address. It seems that they will however just create a new email address I have now thrown down the gauntlet and Don Quixote like started charging at the windmills of industry bulletin and white paper generation. I am patiently searching through each of these emails for the unsubscribe message location. For those of you that may be interested it is normally located in either the top, middle, bottom side, or corner of the page, and it can be recognized because it is the only writing in the message that is in 4 point font. It is also occasionally written in “white”, just to add to the challenge of finding it.
This seems like a significant amount of work, especially since I don’t ever remember subscribing to this stuff in the first place. I am also concerned that if there are enough people like me in the work force who are taking these steps to try to hold on to their business email mailbox like I am, there could be significant productivity lost in the work place. Perhaps this could be a root cause factor to the current business malaise that we all seem to be in.
Confidence and Time
When was the last time you were 100% sure about a business or sales decision? We all like to say we are when we make a decision. Occasionally we might even be that sure. Most of the time I don’t think we are that sure. We usually have an acceptable amount of information or input that enables us to feel confident enough to make our decision and move forward. If we didn’t feel confident, we would ask for more information and decisions wouldn’t get made and things wouldn’t get done.
Have you heard the phrase “paralysis by analysis”?
Confidence and how it affects decisions can be looked at on many levels and seems to vary significantly with both the economic climate and the business culture. In harder economic times, such as those we have been experiencing for the last while, it seems we need more information to make us feel confident enough to make decisions. The return for making the right decision seems to be outweighed by the risk of making the wrong decision. We also seem to be in many instances encouraging a “matrix” business culture where “consensus” is almost a requirement for any decision to be made.
Pareto would tell us that we will get 80% of the information in 20% of the time or inputs. It would follow that on average with this input you would make the right decision at least 80% of the time based on this 20% input. You would be right at least 4 out of 5 times. Just think how well you would do if you had this kind of accuracy with respect to your decisions in the stock market.
It seems we are now in economic times where the risk of being wrong once outweighs the benefits of being right 4 times. So now where do we go? Is it acceptable to only be wrong once out of every 10 times? Once out of every 20 times?
We need to remember that as we require this greater and greater accuracy on our decisions, we also require greater and greater amounts of information on which to base the decision and more importantly greater and greater amounts of time with which to make the decision. The result is we end up moving slower and slower. It ends up taking us longer to react. It takes us longer to get moving. It takes us longer to recover. When then layer in a matrix / consensus business structure and environment where the process has to be repeated for each individual associated with the consensus, it is almost a wonder that progress can be made at all.
Of the major resources available to a business, Money, People and Time, the only one that can not be replaced or replenished it Time. Physics tells us that Time only moves in one direction, and unless you are travelling at relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light) and doesn’t slow down. It would seem that if we focused more intently on Time as it affects our businesses that we would probably get a better return on our decisions, and start moving faster.
Moving our businesses forward will require the confidence to make right decisions as well as the acceptance of wrong decisions. We need to understand that no decision will engage reality and remain intact. They will all need to be modified. The “correct” decisions will only need to be modified slightly (if at all). The “incorrect” decisions will need to be modified to a greater extent.
The point here is that it will probably take less Time to modify the one potentially wrong decision out of five (the 80 / 20 rule) than it would take to gather all the information and gain the consensus required to get a higher level of surety across all five decisions.
I think that in these economic times with businesses focusing on the risk, and hence moving slower and slower, the business that has the confidence to focus on Time will gain the advantage by starting to move faster than the competition, and get the return.
It Can Be Done
I had lunch with some friends of mine a couple of months ago. While at lunch we were all lamenting the seeming inexorable movement to the matrix organizational structure that we were all experiencing. There are times when I have felt that working for one boss was impossible (depending on the boss), but the very thought of working for two, or three or even four at the same was enough to send me screaming from the room. It seems we humans are blessed with the capability to get used to just about anything.
The standard matrix organization seems to be structured along the lines functional responsibilities (vertical) and regional ownerships (horizontal). I think we can all get our heads around this one. On occasion it can even seem to make sense.
The third dynamic that seems to be creeping into the matrix organizational lexicon appears to be that of the “Project”. We now have to understand how to operate within a vertical functional organization, a horizontal regional structure, and deliver within a project alignment that has pieces of and responsibilities to both of them.
To that point I started looking into the structures and responsibilities associated with “Project Management”. You know those guys who put “PMP” after their names. After having been through several of these management waves in the past I thought it might be a good idea to think about and perhaps even try to get ahead of this one.
Now back to my friends at lunch.
One of them told me that he too had been looking into the “PMP” phenomenon and had found out some interesting facts. I had thought that you had to take special training and go through rigorous course to attain a PMP certification. Not true said my friend. While you hade to have some training (and just about any training that you have had can count toward this amount) there was no special training that was required.
I also thought that the only way to pass the certification exam was to take a long rigorous, expensive training course. Again, not true said my friend. The PMP certification exam is 200 questions and you have 4 hours to do it. The exam is based on the “Product Management Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK for short) book (currently in the 4th edition, but a 5th edition is coming out shortly). There are many guides available to help you study, and there are even practice tests to help you prepare.
I said okay. I’ll do it. I bought the books about the time I wrote a Blog article here about “Spare Time” and good uses for it. I started reading the PMBOK. It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. I read a study guide. It started to make a little more sense. After reading a second study guide it started to come together. I started taking practice exams. The first few were not pretty. They are very “semantically” driven whereby you have to be aware of specific written queues that provide you the direction to look for the correct answer.
In any event, I went and took the official test yesterday….and passed.
The extra self directed training has helped provide me some additional insight into some of the forces that are helping to drive organizations toward the Functional – Regional – Project matrix model. I think it has also helped position me for the future as this matrix structure moves forward. It may also be the portent of potential future structures where the project is the primary structure. This seems to be the belief of the PMBOK.
I don’t think I have actually drunk that much of the Kool-Aid though.
The point here is that with 6 -7 weeks of additional / free time / part time study and application you can attain this certification. It can be done if you want to do it. I have all the members of my team who are not already PMP certified working on this certification as part of their development plans. I continue to recommend and suggest that everyone else look into it as well. As I said, it can be done.
Interviewing and Closure
A while ago I had an opening in a group I was leading. I did what anybody who has a need for staff (and budget to pay them) does: I interviewed people to fill the position. I went through the standard progression for hiring people. I requested and gathered resumes, and then went through them and made the first cut of people who had the minimum / desirable experience and expertise for the position. I then contacted this “long” list over the phone and had a short conversation with each candidate to ascertain their histories and capabilities as they had detailed in their resumes. After this conversation I again made another cut to the “short” list of candidates.
I then scheduled and had a more in-depth phone conversation with these candidates to understand how they would recognize, approach and solve problems associated with the position. I also wanted to get a start at understanding their various management styles and how they might fit into the existing team. At this point it was relatively clear that all candidates had the technical and hard skills required to perform the work associated with the position, and that the final decision criteria would come down to soft skills and which candidate would fit best into the existing team. The “short” list was then cut to the finalists.
The finalists were then requested to come in and meet face to face for a more in depth discussion on strategies, directions, tactics and methodologies that the candidates would use in performing the work, and interfacing with the other members of the team and other teams.
I was fortunate in that a clear choice emerged, and that it enabled me to make a good selection for the position.
That was the standard progression for the interviewing and hiring people. I think we are all familiar with it, and have probably gone through it at least once and probably several times in our careers. The point that I want to make here is not about the selection process, but about the communication that was then conducted with each prospective candidate who was NOT chosen at each stage of the process.
I had begun to think back to various times that I had interviewed for positions. I recalled that many times the process just seemed to end or go dormant with no feedback or reason given. After a while I would call to ask to understand what the next steps in the process were (after all they had shown interest in me), only to be told that they had already selected someone else. They hadn’t had the courtesy to let me know that I wasn’t selected.
I understand that due to the variations in positions and interviewing leaders no one will be selected for every position they interview for. The point is, that while no one likes to bring people the bad news that they were not selected, the hiring manager has the responsibility to see to it that the unsuccessful candidates are told if and when they are removed from consideration, and if possible to provide a short explanation of the basis of the decision. If you invited someone to the party, you need to stand up and tell them when the process is over for them.
The information needs to be straight forward, simple, and on a par with the position that they were at in the hiring process. If it is at the resume review or early in the process, then a short note thanking them for their time should do. If you have had significant discussions with them either over the phone or in person, I would think that the courtesy of a person to person phone call would be appropriate. I don’t think a detailed discussion or review of the candidate is called for, but at least hearing from you that while the decision was difficult, it was made, and that their participation in the process was appreciated.
I guess there were times in my past career where I would have appreciated that kind of closure on the interview process. Because of that I try to make sure that I provide that kind of closure to people who have gone through the interview process with me.
Free Time
What do you do with your free time? I don’t mean play golf, or spend time with the family. I mean your free time in the office. I know we are all busy and that the demands that have been placed on us require more and more of our focus, but we all have some free time. What do you do when you get off the call, or finish the meeting and don’t have anything scheduled on your daily calendar?
Some surveys suggest that one of the main things we do is go check our email. Not our business / professional email, our personal email. Other surveys also suggest that we go and surf the web to help us “decompress”. Do you leave your office to search out someone / a friend for a little social discussion and activity?
The world, not just the market continues to get more competitive. There are many qualified and talented individuals in many disciplines in the work environment. How can you start to set yourself apart?
The approach that I am taking for myself and my team is to try and re-vector my “free time” toward learning, training and certification. I used to look at people who put all sorts of letters and acronyms after their names with a little bemusement. The truth be told, I still do. I think its great to have the training and certification, but I also think that you need to be self confident enough to not have to continuously display it every time you electronically sign a document.
But I do think the idea that it is desirable to have that training, knowledge and certification to back up your capabilities and talents is starting to grow, and has value. Almost every professional discipline now has some sort of training / certification capability. Sales, HR, Engineering, Design, Project Management and many others all seem to have certifications available. Most of the “training” or course work required to get these certifications / pass the tests in most instances can be done without actually having to sign up and take classes. You just have to read, study and learn.
Reading, studying and learning sounds like something most of us can do in our free time. It probably also will provide us more personal value than checking to see how much new spam we have in our personal mailbox. I like the idea of using free time to set yourself apart and at the same time increase your value to your business.
I am a little frustrated with myself that I didn’t figure this out sooner……
More on Communications…Not More Communications
We have all been in the position where we have a great deal of information to disseminate to a significant number of people. What do we do? We write the “Mother of all Memos” – MoaM, (please pardon the allusion to a wayward military comment in the coining of a new communications phrase) and then put it to a distribution that rivals Santa’s Naughty / Nice list. We now have all the information communicated to all the people. Our job is done here, right? I don’t think so.
On the surface this may seem to be the best way for us to communicate, but it reality it isn’t. It may be efficient for the sender (one memo typed and sent) but is it efficient communications?
Efficient communications is providing the appropriate information to the appropriate audience, at the right time. That means only the information that is needed then, not all the information you have. Does everyone on that massive distribution list need to know everything that is contained in the body of the MoaM? Better yet, will everyone on that distribution list even read the entire memo in an effort to glean the specific pieces of information that they need from it? We would all like to think that everything that we write (including this Blog article) is of such importance that everyone will read it in its entirety, print it out, high-light it, then annotate it and keep it close by where they can often refer to it.
Right.
Efficient communications would call for us to create several shorter memos, with significantly shorter distribution lists where the information in each memo is appropriate for the specific audience and does not contain information that is not needed by that audience. It may be a little more work on the sender’s part but it will more efficiently communicate the information…and it will probably also cut down on the enormous number of the dreaded one-line “reply all” message chains that invariably follow the use of the MoaM.
Effective communications is providing the right information in the right format for the appropriate audience. This means sending emails, right? In the past this has certainly been the case, but is really the most effective method?
As matrix organizations, teaming and collaboration have proliferated, specific communities of interest have been created. Communications capabilities have also been developed in this area. Where email is a One-to-Many, or a Many-to-Many form of communications, new capabilities such as SharePoint (my apologies to both my Mac and PC friends for using a Microsoft example) allows an accessible network location to be created where there is now a Many-to-One communications structure (many people accessing a single information location). This new(er) type of communications format might provide a more effective way to provide the right information to the right audience.
For me the only issue that arises with the creation of SharePoints for communication and information exchange is that it is not a “Push” form of communications. Email allows us the “Push” the information out to the desired recipients and participants. Once it is sent we are reasonbly sure that the desired recipients have it. SharePoint usually requires the desired participants to access the site and “Pull” the information down from it.
It’s a small difference, but in the hectic world in which we are all now working, it is just another activity that we must take the initiative on to accomplish. Emails come to us. They require an action. Even if you choose to do nothing, it was an active decision to do nothing based on the email. If we must go to a location to find out what we must / need to do, it might just be easier to not go, and as a result not have to make a decision regarding what does or doesn’t need to get done.
Now the decision to do / not do anything can be based upon whether or not we have decided to go get the information to act on, not what the information is itself may be.
It used to be just writing a big, long memo and sending it to everyone. Now we need to look at what is efficient (what information for which audience), and what is effective (what format “Push/Pull”, for which audience) will be the best to achieve the objectives.
On the other hand, it might not be such a bad idea to just pick up the phone and call……
Clock Your Time
I recently read “The Sales Messenger” by Mary Anne (Wihbey) Davis. I don’t normally read books like this and I am a bit out of the habit. I guess I will have to get back in the habit.
The Sales Messenger touched on a topic (one of many actually) that had aspects of both the concept of “the difference between activity and work” and “the choice of what to do and what not to do”. I found this very interesting in our current times where we are all asked to do more with less. The key here was choosing work that resulted in progress, and then performing it, instead of activities that kept us busy.
This is probably pretty simple, right? Surely everything that we are doing is associated with generating progress toward our professional objectives and goals. After all, we are all so busy at the office. The point was that we are all so busy, but when we really get down to examining what we are doing, I think that we will find out like those individuals profiled in “The Sales Messenger” that we are probably doing a lot of activities that don’t necessarily result in progress.
The idea that was proposed was that we should all create a tracking log of our time. We should note how many minutes (or hours) of each day or week are spent on which specific tasks we have been given, or chosen to do. Then we need to go through, or better yet, have someone help us go through the professional value that we derive from each task. This is the key. We have to be honest in the value assessmants.
If what we are doing is not directly helping us achieve our goals, or is not efficiently achieving that purpose, it is a candidate for an activity that should either be discontinued or changed. A prime example of this was provided in the form of “Networking”. We have all networked. We are all familiar with its concept. The example provided was in using networking to generate sales leads.
If you are spending time networking to generate sales leads, you need to quantify both the time you spend networking (time card) and the number of sales leads you have developed in each networking period, and assess if this is the most efficient use of your time. If it is, obviously you should keep at it. If it is not, you then need to decide to either stop doing that activity and free up the time to do something more productive, or change how you network.
Either way it comes down to clocking your time on the tasks you are performing, and then measuring the value that you get from each task. I think we will all find that there are things that we are doing at our jobs that have little to no relationship to the work we need to accomplish. Sometimes it is hard for us to sort this out on our own.
I thought the simple idea of specifically clocking our time spent on each function, and then basically doing a micro – cost / benefit analysis on how that time was spent, was one of the best and most effective ways I have seen to help identify how we can devote more time to making progress and reduce our time spent on activities that are clogging up our already too busy days.
What Would You Do ? (Part 2)
A little while ago a friend of mine called me and asked me the following question:
“A past business associate of mine is out looking for a job and has put me down as a reference. While I know times are hard and I do want to be supportive of him, he was not in my opinion a very good employee. On one hand I don’t want to give him a bad recommendation and potentially ruin his chance at a position, but on the other hand I do not want to give a report or recommendation that is not the truth. What should I do?”
This is a situation for our current times. With so much continued upheaval in the job market, I am sure that we all know multiple numbers of people who either are, or have been looking for new positions. I am also reasonably certain that although we many know multiple people who are searching for a new job, we might not be as willing or prepared to vouch for or recommend some of them as we may be for others.
So that brings up the question: What would you do if someone put you down as a reference, and you did not feel comfortable in providing a positive recommendation?
Do you respond to the person by saying that you would not feel comfortable being a reference for them? This would inevitably lead to having to explain why you would not want to provide the reference input. It might lead to hard feelings and someone who in the future might feel they have reason or position to cause you professional issues in the future. Who can truly say they know where they will be working, or who they will be reporting to in the future?
Do you accept and provide a less than glowing reference and potential derail an employment opportunity?
Do you accept and provide a less than fully truthful positive reference?
It’s at times like this that I remember what my dad has told me in the past: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
My recommendation to my friend was that if he did not want to directly respond “no” to the request, (which would probably be the proper response) then he should not to respond at all to either the request to be a reference or the request for reference input by whomever his name had been provided to. Let his inaccessibility and silence be his comment. Normally both the reference requestor and the reference input requesting entity should get the message.
People who have something positive to say about someone are normally accessible. Those who don’t have something good to say normally aren’t accessible.
I would say this course of action is the professional equivalent of the “pocket veto”. A pocket veto is a legislative maneuver in United States federal lawmaking that allows the President to indirectly veto a bill. If the president does not want to go on the record as being against a bill, he can hold it with no response until congress adjourns. His “no response” in effect kills the bill without having to take the active measure of vetoing it.
Given the situation that my friend outlined, this was my suggestion. What would you do?
What Would You Do?
The other day a friend of mine told me that he had been given notice that he was being laid off from his company. He worked in a medium/small sized technology equipment company. As we all know the economy has not been such that any of us can take our current employment for granted. We all know that it can in fact come to an end either when we do or don’t expect it.
We had lunch and started the planning process on where he might look for a position and how he should present himself. I put him in contact with some of the networking groups that I had been associated with in the past as well as gave his resume a fairly aggressive review. For a sales guy, he did not seem to have enough “sales” activities on it. I made some changes and I also put him on to a person who was something of a resume “guru” to help him restructure it going forward.
He then started to tell me the story of how he got laid off. He was not caught off guard. He was probably far from surprised. But it also provided the grist for the ethical question that his manager faced, and that I am posing here.
Secrets are hard to keep in any company, let alone a smaller one. As decisions of this type get made they have a tendency to filter down at least in deed, if not in fact. If management knows they are going to be making a change, they start planning for it. As the plans become apparent, so does the precipitating action. This is the situation that my friend faced.
He did the right thing. He called his manager. He asked the question. Should he be prepared for an employment event? This was a man that he had known and been friends with for more than 20 years. His manager and friend told him “no”.
3 days later his manager called him in and notified him of the company’s decision to make a change and of his severance.
When he asked “Why didn’t you tell me when I asked 3 days ago?” his manager responded by saying that he had been instructed by management not to tell him until the official notification date, “… and besides, what difference does 3 days make?”
This brings up the question: What would you do if you were in the manager’s position?
Would you too rigorously obey the corporate directive? Would you disobey the directive and provide the direct and honest information to a friend and colleague of 20 years? Would you try to find some middle ground where you don’t directly disobey the corporate directive, but do obliquely confirm that the notification is going to happen?
I can not, and do not speak for my friend. If I were in his position I would believe that a 20 year relationship may have been irreparably damaged. I don’t count myself as lucky as to say that I have so many friends that I could take the losing of one in such circumstances lightly.
I can not and do not speak for the manager. I have been in his position. In today’s business world we all have varying levels of concern regarding or employments and our future employments. Do we truly fear for our own positions at such a level as to alter our behaviors to such an extent? I will say that having been there, that open, direct and honest responses and communication in these situations has always, always been the best approach. If a decision has been made, I would respond as such. If it is still pending, then that should be communicated as well.
Yes, this approach has gotten me in a little trouble in the past, but it has always proved to be the proper course when dealing with these types of employment situations. The company knows what it is going to do with respect to the employee in question. It has probably known for some time. It is the trouble I would prefer to have when confronted by an employee who asks “Am I on the list for the coming lay-off?” instead of having to respond to “Why didn’t you tell me when I asked?”
To me a direct question deserves a direct response, even if it is a response that is not desired, or even feared. If you really don’t want to know, then don’t ask. If you do want to know, accept the response, good or bad, in the same way as the question was posed.
That’s just me. What would you do?
Stop Multi-Tasking
Despite the number of stories that are on the news at night telling us that the economy is starting to slowly improve, and that the economists are starting to see the beginnings of job growth, it seems we are all plagued by the same mantra at the office: We need to do more. It still seems that staffing levels are precariously low, and that the demands for more production and productivity are still as high as ever, if not higher. This has given rise to the new office buzz word, Multi-Tasking.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not supporting the idea that everyone should be doing only one thing at a time, all the time, but it seems we have gone to the limit and beyond when it gets to the point when we are asking (or are being asked) to attend multiple calls or meetings at the same time and we accept.
How many of you have been in the middle of what you believe is a very important conference call and the crucial question has been posed, and you wait for the subject matter expert to respond, and you wait, and you wait and you wait. And finally someone realizes that they are the one everyone is waiting for, and they come on the line and say….
“I’m sorry, would you please repeat the question?”
They were doing something else. They could have been on another call. They could have someone else in their office. They could have been playing solitaire on their computer. It doesn’t matter.
They weren’t paying attention to the conference call that they had agreed to attend.
When I have mentioned this phenomenon to friends they are quick to defend the offender (in some cases themselves) with the statement that due to the number of meetings that they are requested / directed / ordered to attend that they must behave this way. I counter with the simple question:
Would you behave, or conduct business in this way if the meeting were in person, or was with a customer, or with your boss?
Invariably the answer is no, of course not. But it seems that it is acceptable for everyone else.
Two things concern me here. The first is in regard to the behaviors that we are fostering in business. It seems that it has almost become some sort method to feel indispensable by noting the number of calls, meetings and conferences that we have simultaneously. It seems that some feel compelled by the requirements of their job / boss to do this, but with others, I am not so sure.
The point here is that I think we need to change the statement from “We need to do more”, to “We need to do New”. By this I mean as we are requested to take on and perform new tasks, we must be willing to examine our own work load, and get rid of older tasks that may no longer be as useful as they once were, or may not be as useful as the new tasks we have been asked to take on. We each have a limited availability and we need to decide how we can best apply that limited availability.
We need to learn that sometimes we must say “no” when it comes to the ever increasing number of requests for our time. I have previously writing an article on the Value of “No”, and I think it is starting to apply more than ever.
My second concern is that we now seem to be trying to do our jobs without paying our full attention to any one thing that we are doing. Perhaps this is the reason that it seems that the number of people on any one conference call keeps growing. Is it possible that 30 people on a call paying attention half the time are as good as 15 people on a call paying full attention? I don’t think so.
We all have many projects or topics that we are working on at any one time. That is the reality of the world. My view is that when we try to work on two (or more) at the same time, just as when we try to be on two phone calls, or attend two meetings at the same time, we do not do justice to either of them, and we end up with an inferior output from them as a result.
We need to be fully engaged in whatever we are working on, whether it is a meeting, a call or a project, while we are working on it. If there is another demand, then we need to stop and get fully engaged on the new topic. If we try and stay engaged on one topic, while trying to engage on a new topic, we should expect to continue to hear, or sometimes to ask:
“I’m sorry, would you please repeat that?”