In the world before bottlenecks were machines that could not keep up with the pace of other machines and completely blocked the production process. The result: delivery delays, machines not used to their full capacity, swelling inventories and work in progress.
Today, in our dematerialized world of knowledge workers, all these problems are behind us.
No.
In our hyperconnected work environments it’s even worse (Hyperconnectivity in the workplace: digital becomes a burden).
Today, the bottleneck is you, it’s me. We slow down the work of others, we reduce to zero the benefit of the fact that others have improved their work practices or take better advantage of technology, we frustrate others who are prevented from moving forward, we subject others to our rhythm even if it means making them work late and urgently on the day when we finally have time to deal with a subject. And on top of that, we hurt ourselves: cognitive overload, decline in the quality of work and, in the end, collapse and burnout.
Ultimately, the open-plan office is a factory like any other (The open space is not a factory but sometimes you should look at it that way).
Being a bottleneck hurts the business, hurts others and hurts oneself (Digital Infobesity: When Collaboration Tools Degrade Productivity, QWL and Amplify Mental Workload).
An unenviable situation.
But in the absence of collective work on the organization of work, which would be ideal, we can all do something at our own level.
Prioritize and manage requests
The proliferation of communication channels leads to information overload, which affects mental health and productivity.
Bad news: multitasking does not exist (Is multitasking dangerous or a myth ?). You don’t do two things at the same time, but a fragment of each one after the other. You don’t go any faster, you get a headache, you get tired more quickly and you work less well.
Remember: an individual’s cognitive capacity, bandwidth and time are not infinite resources (Eliyahu Goldratt’s fictional interview on infobesity and bottlenecks in knowledge work).
It is essential to know how to identify and prioritize what is important for oneself and for those who work with us, and to focus on that, even if it means not responding to other requests.
Be selfish
This is somewhat of a corollary to the above.
I often say that “your email inbox is a todo list of other people”; tasks that are delegated to you in more or less formal ways, which are useful to the person delegating them to you but have absolutely no bearing on your own work.
Today we can add chats and external solicitations (you know, the pushy salesperson on Linkedin whom you would like to chop off both hands so that he never touches a keyboard and who doesn’t understand why you have better things to do than to answer him). (I didn’t answer you? That’s perfectly normal!).
There are only two types of tasks that matter to you. Those that are your responsibility and on which you will be judged and evaluated, and those that matter to the people who work with you on the same workflow.
As a manager, I may have tasks that are expected of me (reporting, presentation to the Executive Committee), but there are also those that I “owe” to my team, such as an approval or a decision. If I don’t do it, they have worked (and worked fast) for nothing and, what’s more, all the tasks subordinate to mine are put on hold. Everyone has worked as hard as they can so that we finish on time with a high-quality deliverable and through no fault of my own we will finish late and I will ruin their work.
These two types of tasks are a priority and among them it is sometimes necessary to tackle the most urgent ones or sometimes those that you can deal with in the 20 minutes you have in front of you.
Nothing else should exist or come to distract you. As long as you don’t have a cushion of time available in front of you, you shouldn’t lend yourself to anything else, not even reading it!
If you are reading these lines and have been pestering me for months on LinkedIn to sell me something I didn’t need, you know why I never bothered to reply. I would even say that I wasted my time and attention replying to you.
Encourage empowerment and delegation
This is news that may affect your ego, but in the end it is very good news. You are not (always) indispensable.
Are you sure that your validation is necessary? That no one else can make this decision?
Most workflows and decision-making processes were established at a time when people did not have the same level of education, did not have the same technology available… but we continue to apply them over and over again without questioning them.
At one time after taking up a position, I discovered a time-consuming, cumbersome work organization where I had to control absolutely everything down to totally anecdotal details. I projected myself into the future and saw myself in a first-class bottleneck.
When I asked why they did it that way, because you always have to question the raison d’être of load-bearing walls before knocking them down (Destruction, disruption, change and transition strategies), I got the answer I feared. “That’s the way we’ve always done it”.
Everything had been set up by a former manager who was a fan of micromanagement and no one had questioned it since. This may explain why some of the managers who succeeded him failed to make the team more efficient.
The performance of a team is based on the trust and autonomy of its members. By delegating responsibilities and encouraging initiative, you avoid centralizing all decisions and tasks.
Don’t forget that while control is necessary, it can be done intelligently (How to love control and not be a burden to yourself and your teams?) and that your employees are surely the best experts in their processes and workflows and in how to adapt them to a given situation (People Centric Operations: adapting work and operations to knowledge workers ).
Optimize the use of digital tools
Digital tools are supposed to facilitate collaboration, but their misuse can have the exact opposite effect (Workplace Collaboration: When Technology Saturates, Productivity Stagnates and Generations Disconnect and Are collaboration tools really about collaboration?)
At the very least, configure these tools to receive only relevant information and set aside dedicated time slots for viewing messages.
Also think about individual and collective use cases and routines and, why not, do it with your team: you will be surprised to see that everyone is more or less willing to take some time together to agree on use cases and rules that will finally stop them wasting time (Collaboration tools in the workplace: a real waste?).
On this last point, we had started to ask ourselves the right questions during the lockdown, but we have learned no lessons (Are you really ready for all cases of remote working ?).
Communicate priorities clearly
“Shit in, shit out”. When we don’t know how to clearly communicate to others what we expect from them, we get something back that we don’t like and we spend our time trying to explain and clarify over and over again.
At a time when everyone is trying to write clear prompts for ChatGPT, it would be good if this learning could also be used to talk to humans (No one should be promoted to manager if they don’t know how to use ChatGPT).
Similarly, there are methodologies for effective and productive interactions (CRM can save your business, but not the CRM you think!).
Remember: unclear communication means endless and avoidable time spent explaining and correcting later, which prevents you from doing useful things.
There also needs to be transparency about what everyone is doing, their schedule, their priorities, their workload. Here again, technology facilitates this transparency, but a weekly meeting to share the week’s issues, priorities and problems allows everyone to align in a very short time by sharing these topics.
By regularly informing your team of your workload and your availability, you can avoid misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations.
Take care of your mental health
Speaking of bottlenecks, everyone can alternately be perpetrator and victim, and it all starts with oneself.
Remember, on a plane, in the event of depressurization, you are told to think about putting on your mask first before helping others.
It’s the same thing here. If you are overwhelmed by external demands, work as if your time and cognitive abilities were infinite. You will become a problem for others, but above all for yourself. And that’s when we talk about health.
It is essential to recognize your limits, take regular breaks and disconnect outside of working hours. A healthy lifestyle, whether physical or digital, helps to maintain a regular level of performance and avoid becoming a blockage for others.
Bottom line
“If it’s immaterial, it can’t be seen, so there’s no problem.” When we talk about information flows and knowledge workers, this is a mistaken assertion.
Information flows are merely messengers, but the messages are not trivial: they determine our workload, our priorities, our mental load, and the way we manage them determines our success and that of others and, ultimately, the performance of the business.
The good news is that we can regain control if we are aware of the importance of the subject and are able to impose a certain discipline on ourselves.
Image: bottleneck by Net Vector via Shutterstock
