Time & Attention – your most unmanaged resource

Prefer to watch on video than read?  Click here – 4 mins with captions.

What makes it hard to get stuff done at work?  Interruptions.

And even if you’re not constantly looking at email (or some other interruption device you’ve installed like Slack), there’s an awareness of a constantly building-up bunch of stuff coming towards you…so the urge to check is strong.

A Better Way

Some companies are deliberately doing something about this, and one that stands out to me is the software company Basecamp which is run by Jason Friend and David Heinemeier Hansson, who look like this:

You can see them holding their most recent book, which I suggest you read – It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work.

Among the various things they talk about, what stands out to me is:

• 40 hours per week.  Not as some sort of idea, but as a deliberate way that they set up work…so their people can do their bit in 40 hours per week.
• Time & Attention – a focus on protecting the time and attention of their people.  In other words, interruptions are not a regular part of the day.  Why?  Because to get your work done in 40 hours per week, that’s what we need to do.

Here’s the thing – if you’re in a manager role, you have the authority to determine the amount of work that comes in to your people.  It’s part of the job. 

I know, I know – you’re hit with unreasonable demands yourself.  And to say ‘not yet’ is going to be hard.  Real hard.

But if you don’t say no…that means your people will eventually have to.  Or crack.  If you’re the manager…then you’re paid more than them.  So we have to ask if this is fair!

However, this has all come about due to forces out of your control. 

How Did We Get Here?

There are factors in play that have led us to our overworked, underprioritised, stressed work situation, which are:

• Empowerment – “I’ll give you the power to decide your work”
• Agility – “we need to be able to move from one thing to the next, so here’s everything”
• Interconnectedness – “we’re a global village now, so it’s coming from everywhere”
• Fear of micromanaging – “if I tell you what to do, I’ll be one of those types of bosses”
• Treating people like adults – “if I tell you what to do, aren’t I treating you like a child?”

All the above come from a good place.  No frowns from me.  We just need to keep an eye on things, because these can combine to people having to work in an environment that’s stressful, with little opportunity to focus and produce some great work that they can feel happy with.

Management

The word ‘gatekeeper’ sounds horribly unfashionable.  But we need to have a look at what’s going on here…

Let’s refresh what this ‘management’ thing is.  It means to make the resources as valuable as needed.  So, if you’re managing a public pool, it means to make sure the thing is clean, hygienic, looks nice…all so the community gets the value it’s paid for.

You might feel uncomfortable referring to people in this way, but it’s the same thing – the job of ‘management’ is to make the resources valuable.  Your heart can be happy because valuable people feel…valuable.  And your head can be happy because the whole point of investing cash into people (called salary) is to create value.

It’s just the job of management, which can be done by a role called ‘manager’, or a group…either way it’s needed.

Which means if your people are spending their time chasing one thing after another with a constant crushing overload….you are inadvertently wasting the cash of your organisation.  As well as hurting their souls!

Protecting your people’s time and attention is one of the best things you can do for your people…and the results of your organisation.

Addressing How We Got Here

Let’s undo some of the assumptions from above.

Empowerment – you are not disempowering your people if you are holding back the torrent of work coming at them.  Disempowerment is depriving them of information, allowing them no say in what should be done next, and not taking their views into account.  And…by being unclear on what they can make decisions about then getting in the way.

Agility – you are not agile if you are constantly changing from one thing to another.  Completing 5% of 100 things means zero things are shipped.  Which means you are frozen.  Agility comes from being integrated, from getting things shipped, then through being able to observe what is happening and making decisions about what this means.  Not from playing whack-a-mole with whatever happens to come up next.

Interconnectedness – we handle things being interconnected by deliberately sifting through and making decisions about what to work on next…and then focussing on it.  Whether it’s a manager or the team doing it as a group, we can’t respond to things being interconnected by ourselves being connected all the time.  At some point, we need to get work done.  The mailbox itself is not the work.

Fear of micromanaging – to micromanage means to offer unsolicited instructions on how to do the job when the job itself is already clear.  Like back-seat driving.  It’s not, however, back-seat driving to get clear upfront on where we are going, why, and when we need to get there.  Nor to observe or ask for the occasional update on where things are up to. 

Managing means to get the work clear and to ensure all involved’ s efforts are being put to the best use.  Which means organising the work.  Managing and micromanaging are two different things.

Treating people like adults – to treat people like children is to hide information from them.  To not let them know the full story that the group is facing.  It is not treating people like children to take on the role of ensuring that the work being asked of the team is possible.  Someone needs to do that role on behalf of the group.  It’s called management.  Might as well be the manager.

Bringing it Home

To protect your people’s time and attention is most likely going to take some courage.  This is where the leadership part of being a manager comes in because someone needs to go first.  Try to negotiate something, get just one or two things removed from the backburner altogether. Call it an experiment.

Imagine what your people could get done with, say, 3 hours of uninterrupted time 2 or 3 times a week

You never know…it might just catch on.