Lesson 2: What “obstacles” are in your way?

Now that you have some idea about how you define “productive and effective”, let’s consider what prevents you from being this way.

Here’s an interesting story about “obstacles”.

Several years ago, when I used to manage a Technical Support department, one of my call center employees expressed intense frustration with her lack of productivity.

“I can’t get anything done because I keep getting interrupted by the phone!”

Hmmm, I thought. Your work *is* answering calls from customers all day long. So what is going on?

After talking with her at length, I found out several interesting pieces of information.

The software products supported by the call center were getting more and more complex, so support calls were getting complex too. Issues were taking longer to resolve.

Previously, she’d be able to resolve the issue during the initial phone call from the customer. Now, more and more, after she hung up the phone with the customer, she’d have to research the problem some more, find a solution or at least a workaround, and call the customer back with the answer.

However, new calls came in while she tried to work on the previous unresolved calls, leaving her feeling frustrated, fragmented and overwhelmed.

When she felt this way, she couldn’t focus on her work, she became impatient with customers for not “getting it”, and annoyed with the product developers and managers for creating a complicated product.

Her job required her to go with the flow, answer calls and resolve problems as they came in. But circumstances were preventing her from doing so.

During our conversation I also found out that she had thought about what might solve this situation: If she could find a block of time to work on such problems, without being interrupted and without feeling pressured about calls piling up, she’d be able to quickly and effectively solve the customer issues, and get back to answering new calls.

What’s the point of this story?

Well, the better you understand the nature of the problem, the better your solution will be.

I read an article in Fast Company magazine about the importance of design. And in it there was a reference to a person at Ford, a Giuseppe Delena, who was quoted as having said, “Don’t tell me you need a bridge, show me the canyon!”

What an excellent metaphor!

All bridges have the same function - to get you from point A to point B. But the design of each bridge totally depends on the terrain.

For example, what’s the nature of the “obstacle” between point A and point B? Is it a river, a canyon, a bay, a highway or railroad tracks? And what else is in the area? Granite mountains, marshlands, houses, open land, other roads?

I’m no expert on bridges, but I can understand how the length and height of the bridge, whether it’s a suspension bridge or not, what construction materials are used to build it, all depend on the nature of the “obstacle” to be bridged and the surrounding area.

So:

  • What are your “obstacles”?
  • What’s between you and the goal of being more productive and effective?
  • And what else is going on at work, and in your life?

Because your answers will most definitely affect the solution.

For my call center employee, being productive and effective meant resolving as many support issues as possible, during her normal working hours.

She had three main obstacles:

  1. First, her time was fragmented due to the nature of the job.
  2. Second, most days she didn’t have anyone to cover the phones for her, so she could work on these complex problems without worrying about new calls piling up.
  3. And third, the product designers and developers didn’t realize or understand how the customers were being affected by the product design.

In order to truly resolve the situation, she first had to identify the REAL problems.

Otherwise we might have simply addressed the symptoms, which would have been like treating a broken leg with a band-aid.

So what do you know about what prevents you from being productive and effective? What else can you learn about it?

ACTION STEP

Read through your notes from last week.

What do you notice about the following:

  1. What allows you to be productive and effective, as you define it?

  2. And what prevents you from being so?
    * Is it your mood and/or your attitude?
    * Is it the other people around you?
    * Is it a specific situation - in other words, are you productive and/or effective only at certain times and in certain contexts?

  3. Is there a connection between being productive and effective?

The more “data” you have, the better you’ll be able to see the patterns and themes.

So if you want, repeat the assignment from last week again this week, to gather more data.

Make a note of your discoveries - we’ll use it next week in Lesson 3 (What is the best structure for your work?).
– Sri