Let's not pander to boredom!

A reader wrote me an email and asked my opinion of this interesting blog post from Thinking Faster called, Channel Surfing Management. Check it out and then come back here to better understand my comments. The author, Jeffrey Philips, is basically suggesting that we structure the work to fit how we live - in his case, he is a channel surfer, and he wants things in very short bites (90 second presentations, lots of tasks to switch between).

Overall, I think it is good to consider how the work can be structured to best fit the style and preferences of workers and I think we should offer as much flexibility as possible. There are a couple of cautions I would offer regarding his specific suggestions:

1. Jeffrey suggest we shorten conversations to brief pitches. I think we don't discuss things of importance nearly enough and not nearly deep enough. The problem is that our meetings are filled with so much crud, that we don't have time. So if you want to spend 90 seconds on the crud, that seems like progress (0 seconds would be better). But I would advocate spending as much time as needed on those topics that are important - especially if business decisions will be made based on the discussion.

2. Jeffrey suggests we offer employees several different tasks to do so they can switch often. Offering choice is good, but let's remember what we know about multi-tasking - we loose productivity. So switching is fine if it is not too often, but we lose focus and productivity if we switch too often in a small period of time.

The title of this post is "let's not pander to boredom," because we sometimes do things because we are bored or to make them more exciting. I want work to be fun and exciting and I think we can achieve this without wrecking focus and excellent conversation about what matters most. I can relate to the desire to change things up - I get bored very quickly myself. It might be more fun to do 20 things in a day, and do each just a little bit. For your company (overall productivity and quality of work), it might be better if we took some time and care to focus more deeply on some tasks.

Using the channel surfing metaphor - if you switch from channel to channel, will you really see and understand the nuances of the programs that are most important? Again, I am all for switching through the unimportant stuff, but if you are on a project team that is doing important work, I would hate for you to tune in for 15 seconds at a time and never really get into the good nitty gritty and build the conversations and relationships that will make the project a success.

One last point. If your workplace has a mixture of 20 somethings and 30 somethings on up to fifty or sixty somethings, realize that there will be a variety of styles and preferences you might need to consider. If you have channel surfers working for you, feel free to add some variety while keeping the focus on mission critical work. And if you manage younger workers (or older channel surfers), reading Jeffrey's post might help you better tune your communications to keep their interest up. It is a fact of life that today's young professionals are IMing, texting, and You Tubing as a part of their daily socialization - we all need to better understand today's communication vehicles of choice.

That's my 2 cents. What do you think?

Comments

[Jeffrey Phillips]

Hi Lisa.

Thanks for your comments on my blog post about channel surfing. I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been - the real focus of my post is that some people are best at taking information in, and managing information, in small "chunks" and like to surf between different chunks of information or channels. Rather than enforce that we all work the same way and consume information the same way, can we recognize that there are different information consumption and use patterns and tailor our work accordingly.

This was especially tailored to older, more conservative managers who want to work one item to death at a time, while some younger workers are very comfortable and expect to multitask across several topics at the same time.

[Pat]

Thanks for commenting on channel surfing. I agree on getting through the crud quickly and think this is a great way to accomplish that. I worry, though, about people who use this style constantly. Too often I see people jump into action too quickly with little understanding of the needs of the people they are trying to serve and the impact that their actions will have on the work of others. Perhaps it is my style, but I believe enough thought should be given to each action to anticipate the consequences. This can be done quickly and as part of multitasking when necessary. Is there such a thing as thoughtful channel surfing?