Voicemail, e-mail, Skype, text, FaceTime, instant message, Facebook—workers have never had more ways to communicate. A 2012 report from McKinsey Global Institute, The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies, finds that by fully implementing these social (communication) technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers—high-skill knowledge workers including managers and professionals—by 20 to 25 percent.
In theory, this sounds great; in reality, however, every communication channel our busiest employees get better at using becomes one more pipeline of additional demands on their time. Unless we help them become equally proficient at managing their workday, it’s highly unlikely we will achieve any increase in productivity from these new channels of collaboration.
No one would argue the importance of effective time management skills, or that they are even more important in today’s highly interconnected workplace. Add to that the increasing complexity of work in general, and it is clear that the goal setting and prioritization taught in basic time management is no longer enough. Today, employees at all levels of the organization must be knowledgeable, bigger picture thinkers in order to effectively determine what work will bring the most value to the organization. They also must be empowered by the organization to choose to do only that work which meets this criteria, every minute of every day.
Is the Work Worth Doing?
The need for this new, more executive level of time management capability became clear to one of my clients in 2012. Charged with maintaining the effectiveness of more than 80,000 workers collaborating from 80 different countries, she realized that effective workday planning was not only important to each person’s individual performance, it was critical to her company’s success.
In response, she developed a two-day training program focused on workday planning, i.e., time management, but with a new twist: Instead of prioritizing work based only on individual work goals and organizational business objectives, participants learn that they have an obligation to themselves and to the company to determine whether the work that comes across their desks is worth doing at all.
Teaching non-management workers to question their work may seem counterintuitive, but in practice it is a valuable skill. At any company, but especially multinationals, it is important to recognize how individual assumptions and biases influence the way different people approach the same work.
Given the cultural and geographical diversity of her company, my client’s primary learning objective was to demonstrate the value that each person’s unique individual assumptions and biases bring to the work; and, in turn, to their individual and organizational performance. In other words, because each worker brings a different perspective to the collective work table, each person has the opportunity and—this is important—the obligation, to contribute his or her individual best to the work by critically questioning whether any particular work is the best use of their time, another’s time, or no one’s time.
This learning is especially important for less experienced workers, and the reason my client first targeted this training to workers who have less than 10 years on the job and who are not responsible for managing others. These non-management workers often assume they have no option but to complete a task they are given, when actually it is in the best interest of the company that they learn they have multiple options: They can choose to do it, defer it, delegate it, drop it, or redesign it.
Usually only managers and executives are encouraged to think in this critical manner about work. But in my experience, when people become comfortable questioning and challenging assumptions about work, it often becomes clear that redesigning the work—doing it in a new way than was originally specified—is often the best option.
Value of a Teambuilding Simulation
So how do we teach this? This is where I come into this story. My client came to me in search of a learning experience that would allow her employees to really experience the value to be gained by challenging assumptions about work and work redesign.
Having seen a teambuilding simulation I co-developed called Paper Planes, Inc., my client believed it could help participants in workday planning since it demonstrates how thinking critically about work before taking any action can bring more value to the work and more success to the company.
In the simulation, participants play the roles of employees in an aircraft manufacturing company, making in this situation, actual, flyable paper planes. Each person is given a role—cutter, folder, inspector, tester, supervisor, and customer—and a description of the work they will be expected to do in order to produce the planes. Teams have an opportunity to sell as many planes as they can make that meet the customer’s specifications, which are communicated at the same time they receive their role and work descriptions. After each production run, the teams get the opportunity to evaluate their efforts and to redesign the work process in order to sell more planes. Realistic (unexpected) customer interventions and market changes complicate the process along the way.
Most people start the simulation laughing and saying things along the line of “no problem,” and “this will be easy.” Most groups do the work exactly as described by the facilitator, so it is disappointing and surprising when they fail to produce even one plane that meets the customer’s standards in the first run.
According to my client, you can practically hear the virtual lightbulbs popping on as teams realize they can and should challenge assumptions about the work. Once they begin asking questions of the facilitator and the customer, they begin redesigning the way they make their paper planes and quickly begin to have more success. They quickly realize they had the power to do this the whole time, but because they didn’t question the facilitator, the supervisor, or the customer (i.e., they let their assumptions rule their actions), they didn’t get the results they could have. The difference in the number of planes made that meet specifications in the second run is usually a clear and powerful lesson that hits home.
The concept of challenging assumptions about work is especially powerful in a culturally diverse and dynamic business environment. Workers learn that work that was a valuable use of time yesterday may be irrelevant today due to a change in the market, the customer’s specifications, or even an improvement in the work process that happened prior to their contribution.
The experiential learning provided by the simulation clearly demonstrates to participants that challenging the validity of the work and the work process rather than simply accepting it as it was presented to them, can dramatically improve personal effectiveness, which, in turn, increases the value of the individual contribution to the company.
More Intentional, Meaningful Work
You probably are wondering if the learning from the simulation is netting the same results on the job as it does in the classroom. My client reports that while they don’t yet have quantifiable increases in productivity, participants continuously report that the training makes them think about what they do all day and why they do it, which they say makes their work feel more intentional and meaningful.
This is important, according to the 2012 Towers Watson Global Workforce Study, which finds that this feeling that their work is more meaningful can directly affect employee and organizational performance in terms of operational and financial margins.
Perhaps more importantly, the study asserts that while most companies are running their businesses differently in today’s highly interconnected workplace, a surprisingly large number aren’t keeping pace in terms of how they are managing and supporting workers on the front lines, i.e., training them in the new, more executive level of time management.
Maybe it’s time to ask: How is my company doing in this department? How many additional channels of communication and collaboration are in use today as opposed to five years ago? Has productivity increased or decreased? Why, or why not? How are we helping our employees manage the increasing demands on their workday?
Asking these questions and others like them could be a valuable use of your time today or any day.
Christopher Musselwhite is the founder and CEO of Discovery Learning, Inc. He has helped to design and deliver programs in leadership, creativity and innovation, change management, and teambuilding for companies in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Contact Musselwhite at cmusselwhite@discoverylearning.com.
