If we’re all so busy, why isn’t anything getting done?

Ever wondered why, despite the constant hustle, productivity seems elusive? Let's delve into the paradox of busyness versus effectiveness, exploring the potential pitfalls of our modern work culture and strategies to navigate this conundrum.

Bottom Line

Interacting is easier than ever, but true, productive, value-creating collaboration is not.

• Where engagement is occurring, its quality is deteriorating
• Every minute spent on a low-value interaction eats into time that could be used for important, creative, and powerful activities

Creative solutions and coordination: Open innovation

Key success factors in winning organizations are empowering employees and spending more time on high-quality coaching interactions

• Successful empowerment requires leaders to give employees both the tools and the right level of guidance and involvement
• Leaders should play the coach role
• A daily stand-up or check-in can drive horizontal connectivity
• Employers should be on the lookout for common problems indicating that significant challenges to psychological safety lurk underneath the surface

Information sharing: Fit-for-purpose interactions

Many companies are moving to shorter meetings (15 to 30 minutes) rather than the standard default of one-hour meetings in an effort to drive focus and productivity

• Netflix has been able to reduce the number of meetings by more than 65 percent, and more than 85 percent of employees favor the approach
• Making meeting time a scarce resource is another strategy organizations are using to improve the quality of information sharing and other types of interactions occurring in a meeting setting
• No meeting could be considered well scoped without considering who should participate

Three critical collaborative interactions

There are three broad categories of collaborative interactions: decision making, creative solutions and coordination, information sharing, and information sharing

• It is possible to quickly improve collaborative interactions by categorizing them by type and making a few shifts accordingly
• Below are key shifts required to improve each category of collaborative interaction, as well as tools to help pinpoint problems in the moment and take corrective action.

Decision making: Determining decision rights

One of the key factors for fast, high-quality decisions is to clarify exactly who makes them

• Ensuring everyone has a voice but no vote or veto is crucial
• It is often helpful to involve more people in decision making, but not all of them should be deciders
• Just one individual should be the decider

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