What To Do When There's Too Much To Do (13 page)

While some human bottlenecks are beyond your control, you may be able influence others. Ask the person causing you problems, “What can I do to help you get this done?” While you may ask your question in all honesty and with a helpful attitude, you're also letting the person know that they
are
a problem. Now, most human bottlenecks don't like being told they're bottlenecks. Typically, they'll respond in one of two ways: anger or complaints. Anger usually means they're the direct source of the bottleneck (hence the bad attitude). Complaints usually mean something else is causing a bottleneck for them. In the latter case, it may turn out that a piece of equipment, a procedural change, or a suggestion is all it takes to eliminate the problem.

Even if you can't tweak a particular process into usefulness, it may be possible to merge it with another idea that didn't quite work and come up with something that does.

On the other hand, some things just take time to complete. Let those bottlenecks go and move on to others you can fix. But before leaving such a bottleneck, get an estimated completion date. By doing so, you commit the other person to action and know when to follow up. Don't forget about it, but don't worry about it either.

When you're part of a team, each teammate affects your productivity and how quickly things get done. When others are late in getting answers to you, you're late in producing the final product. When you rely on coworkers to review a document before proceeding, a month can go by before you have everyone's input. It's in your best interest to help your team members get things done more quickly, so you can produce better results in less time with fewer frustrations.

One way to increase everyone's response time is to arrange a meeting with your team members at the beginning of a project, so you can plan it through to the end. As much as we all hate meetings, they're worth the time if you can keep dependencies from clogging the workflow later. Lay out the milestones, clearly communicate each team member's responsibilities, and set firm deadlines. Outline what you need from each person and have them do the same for you. Do your best to be flexible in all directions, and establish contingency plans that will allow you to work around emergencies, illness, and other unexpected occurrences.

If your team consists of individuals in diverse locations, teams, or organizations, you'll have to work harder to limit potential bottlenecks. In each case, negotiate very clear agreements on when you need to receive information, materials, or approvals. Politely explain your deadlines and the reasoning behind them, and ask when the team member might be able to provide what you need. Reinforce (in a genial, non-pushy way) the importance of what you're asking, and why their active participation in the project is crucial. This may shore up their motivation, since we all like to feel needed and appreciated.

Contingency planning is even more important with team members you don't work with directly; so if possible, establish alternate means of acquiring what you need. That way, if your primary source is away from the office, or occupied by a higher-priority project, you can turn to the backup for help.

Make contingency plans for your own unavailability as well. Coordinate with a coworker to handle your part of a project if you're unavailable, and make sure your project resources are easily accessible and understandable.

I hate to use a tired old business cliché, but you really do need to think outside the box to make sure the workflow process continues uninterrupted. You should be willing to grease the skids a little whenever things slow to a crawl. Let me give you an example of such streamlining from my own business.

My assistant, Becca, frequently received calls from our clients asking her to send wording they could use to introduce me to audiences at speaking engagements. Ninety-nine percent of the time, she had already sent the information. Even though her job is customer service, it can be frustrating and time-consuming to provide the same information repeatedly.
I uncovered the problem one day when she was joking about how a particular client chronically lost information she'd already sent—possibly the very reason the client had hired me in the first place.

So we brainstormed a solution and decided to post
everything
a client might need on our website, so customers could help themselves to the information they needed without involving her. Every time a customer requested information, we added it to our site. Once we updated the website, we proactively sent links to our clients telling them where they could find this information. Becca now fulfills far fewer manual client requests.

This kind of “I'm on your side” approach saves everyone time and frustration. You're basically saying, “Help us help you.” Actively pursue these opportunities to eliminate nagging time bandits, frustrations, and productivity-sappers from your systems every day. Doing so boosts your productivity, builds solidarity with your colleagues and clients, and shows you're willing to listen to and implement their ideas.

So at your next staff meeting, get some time on the agenda to pose three questions:

1.
What are the three most mind-numbing, time-wasting hoops you must jump through on a weekly basis?
And then listen to the responses. Don't get defensive or combative. Instead, scribble down everything people say and soak it in.

2.
What time-draining procedures or activities do you find yourself doing more than three times a week?
The purpose of this question is to identify the “debris” littering your coworkers' high-speed highway and slowing them down repeatedly. You'll also discover redundancy if multiple people do the same thing.

3.
How can we help you get things done more quickly?
Brainstorm ways to automate your systems and reduce wasted time, so you can all get your work done faster, leave the office earlier, and get home to your lives.

To clear the path to greater group productivity, meet only when absolutely necessary—and then only briefly.

Just think about the innovative thinking that could take place! Make it your goal to help others blast through time-wasting obstacles. By helping them, you help yourself.

While it's great if you can get your coworkers and team members on board with any new systems and procedures you implement, don't worry too much about those who don't join you. Many people are so attached to their old ways of doing things they'd rather die doing them that way. I'm sure you've seen it: the old “We've always done it this way” attitude. I'd say if you've always done it that way, it's probably time to change it.

The best way to bring about change in your organization is to let management see you're more productive than anyone else—they'll want everyone to adopt your systems. You won't have to try to convince them; they'll come to you and ask.

When you reduce inefficiencies, you become a true asset to the organization for which you work. Your improvements and advances will quickly become the standard by which the organization rates everyone else's work. That makes you the expert in the organization.

To consistently close the loop in your workflow process, make constant, unremitting efforts at improvement. Strive to exceed your own standards of performance for yourself, whether those standards are obvious to anyone else or not. It's all too easy to slack off a little here and there when no one's really paying attention.

When he was ten years old, my son Johnny took guitar lessons from a teacher named Michael. One week Johnny taught himself to play the song “Sweet Home Alabama” and practiced it for hours. When Johnny showed off his new song to his teacher, Michael said, “Hey, that's great! Here's how you can play it even a little better,” and showed him how to do a riff. To Michael's surprise, Johnny was resistant to learning it.

When I pressed Johnny about what was wrong after Michael left, he told me, “Well, none of my friends play the guitar, so they won't know if I'm doing a bad job. They think it's cool no matter what I play, so I don't need to work so hard to change it.”

I shook my head, a bit baffled, and gave him the “mom” talk about how personal improvement is also done for the sake of it, not just for other people; you take pride in knowing you did your best at something; we should always strive to get better; besides, when you're an adult, at some point you'll run up against people who
will
know if you're doing a bad job, blah, blah, blah. I'm not sure how much it sank in, but the thought occurred to me that many parents
didn't
give their children this lecture, and now those children are grown up and in the workplace.

Always try to do better, even if no one else knows, even if what you're doing is “good enough,” and even if the only beneficiaries of trying harder are you and your family. You'll save your health and sanity by trimming your workflow process to the bare minimum, and you'll have pride in your work. The more you keep chipping away at it, the more efficient you can become.

Whenever you can spare a little extra time, polish one of your critical productivity skills. Focus on one at a time, and never accept just good enough as good enough.

Now, a few (hundred) words about failure. Let's face it: Implementing the PWF won't come without its hitches. You're going to slam into walls occasionally as you attempt to initiate change and reduce inefficiencies. Not everything is going to work out for you, and sometimes you may want to give up.

In the modern business world, failure is often touted as something glorious, a virtue that almost inevitably leads to success. Oft-cited examples include Edison's 1,000+ unsuccessful attempts to invent the lightbulb before hitting on the right solution, and Bill Gates's unsuccessful first computer business. The experts tell us again and again to fail forward, to fail as fast as possible, and to dare to fail, because it makes us smarter and better in the long run.