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Productivity @ Work
I ‘m a CEO of Kngine, but this doesn’t mean that I suppress the productivity of my folks!
In fact, while I ‘m a CEO but I ‘m also a Computer Sciences Researcher and I used to use the scientific methods in almost everything related to my work, and I read many books and article about productivity at work and how to improve it.
In last a several months I was asking my friends a question that lead me to think more about productivity at work; the question was ‘Where do you really go to get things done’ and the answer was surprising almost no one mentioned the office , in fact the answer ringed between: Home, Kitchen, Basement, Train, Airplane, or period of time like early in the morning or late. So this made me wonder why no one mentioned work office?!
It turn out the work office is not a good place to get things done. The companies spend a lot of money rent or buy place, buy equipments but actually the office is repellent place or place where most of people can’t get things done, and I ‘m not talking about office style or equipments.
Theory About Interruption @ Work:
Creative based work like: Programming, Designing, Thinking, etc. requires long continued time without interruption, because interruption makes us restart our thinking process, lose focus and time. Actually I believe that work is like sleep you need to go through phases to build your thinking bubble.
Productivity Problems:
To answer my question ‘why no one mentioned work office?’ it’s important to understand the concept of volunteered interruption and imperative interruption. When you work at home and turn the TV on this is volunteered interruption which mean you control it, even websites like Facebook, Twitter (that many companies ban it because of productivity!) it’s also a volunteered interruption because you control it, you choose when to be interrupted (i.e. you control when you turn the TV on and off and you control when to open the Web). But you can’t control your manager, your manager, phones and meeting is imperative interruption!
What I want to say, the interruption at work is imperative interruptions. And this is the main problem. If you manager now you can think about what is the imperative interruptions in my environment.
Ideas to thrust Productivity:
- Reduce the team size, the small team are more productive by natural.
- Dedicate a room for each team, and lat the teams to set they roles of meeting and interruptions.
- Slice the work hours into slices, for example:
- 3 hours of prime time (No interruption).
- 2 hours for work, meeting, and interruption.
- 3 hours of prime time (No interruption).
But it’s important to make it customized for each team, one solution doesn’t fit all!
And if you followed my previous idea, post this information on the door of the team room
- There are discussion about the benefits of have private offices, but most of the startups can’t do this, so I suggest to have some dedicated rooms of silent, so even if your environment is not perfect, s/he can use it as quiet place to get things done.
- We can’t schedule a 8 minutes meeting in Outlook!, so we tend to loss time on meeting. I suggest to reduce the meeting time, remember ten people attend one hour meeting is 10 working hours not one!
- Create something like ‘The Silent Thursday’ where employees spend all of they time working no meeting, phones, or other interruption. You will be surprised by the amount of work that will be done in such day!
- Open the door and talk with someone about issue will make everyone on the room lose focus! So I suggest to switch to passive communication tools like: IM, Email, etc. So when anyone want to think or have a moment with him self s/he can simply turn the software off!
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