The pursuit of productivity to accommodate larger volumes of increasingly complex priorities has become a common reality for companies today. It’s a noble pursuit when grounded in reality but it has become unhinged in widespread fashion in the business world. Focus, prioritization and alignment – powerful and proven principles of organizational success – are often discarded in favor of ideals like tech-enabled multitasking to handle a continual influx of additive, non-essential work.
Beyond a certain threshold, humans suck at multitasking. The threshold isn’t easy to observe so it is invariably exceeded, producing some familiar scenarios. Companies have accepted ridiculous realities like all-day back-to-back meetings during which distracted employees attempt to participate as they work on other priorities mid-meeting via their devices. Some even pride themselves on their multitasking prowess; in reality, nothing gets the attention it deserves, nobody does their best work, projects flounder, and people burn out.
So what’s going on here? This is a witches brew of magical thinking and reality avoidance.
Magical Thinking: We tend to assign a fact-like credibility to theoretical ideals, like the increase in productivity through technology, without considering limits. The logic is solid and we’ve seen actual productivity upticks from technology. So far, so good. The magical jump comes because what we really want is for this to be scalable without limit. If a little technology proves to increase productivity a little, we’re quick to assume that more tech can help us to approach unlimited productivity – and anyone who suggests otherwise is old-school, maybe even lazy…they probably lack a can-do attitude. Ultimately, the motivation for magical thinking here is the desire to avoid difficult decisions about priorities that may require discarding non-impactful work.
Reality avoidance: Realities being avoided here are pretty common. They include things like:
- 20 number-one priorities is too many. Tough decisions need to be made.
- You have to say “no” to some new ideas, even though it’s unpopular to turn down projects.
- The “doing more with fewer people” approach works but has limits. You might need more people, fewer projects, or more time.
DON’T GET ME WRONG:
We all know humans can be self-limiting; they can also be motivated to achieve things they never thought possible. I’m a huge fan of maximizing human potential, but that is the sort of thing that is produced by acknowledging and understanding human behavior, not ignoring it.
The SIMPLE ANSWER:
Of course technology helps us to be more productive but it doesn’t function like an antidote to poor planning and lack of prioritization. True prioritization, including identifying what NOT to do, is what will focus your teams on the highest impact work. Imagine taking the same long hours your teams spend dealing with chaotic activity and redirecting it to maximizing impactful results.
Yes, that’s a simple answer…hence the SIMPLE ANSWERS theme. But it needs to be said. If you’re thinking it’s far too simplistic, you may already be starting to avert your eyes from the obvious. It’s a simple answer – and it’s correct. That doesn’t mean it is easy to address. The alternative? Ignore it. That is very easy to do.