REDUCING IT OVERLOAD

by William Seidman

"I need a new app installed."
"I'm getting an RTE on my system."
"I need you to test this app in our environment."
"When are you going to come set up my desktop system?"
"You should be part of the new migration project."
"I have a virus and need you to remove it for me."
"I'm overbooked."
"My plate is completely full."

These are the statements we frequently hear from IT groups. Overload seems to be the norm for most IT organizations.

But some IT organizations don't seem to have this overload problem. What are they doing that others aren't?

Our work with top performers suggests that some organizations are not overloaded because they manage more holistically. Instead of following the conventional wisdom of focusing on smaller, manageable bits of information and narrowly defined initiatives, top performers have a broad underlying vision that unifies all of their behaviors. This unity produces such significant productivity gains that top performers can accomplish vastly more while at the same time actually reducing their stress!

False "Focus" Fix

So what are the factors that most contribute to overload? Ironically, the primary factor in creating a sense of overload, fragmentation of purpose, is a direct result of applying conventional wisdoms. The conventional wisdom for reducing overload is that companies focus intensely on only a few narrowly defined and bounded areas. The tighter the focus, states the conventional wisdom, the greater the productivity of the organization.

However, excessive focus actually makes the overload problem worse. It fragments work into so many small, unintegrated components that the organization's attention fragments as well. For example, an IT project for the development of an enterprise-wide system was deemed to be too complex to undertake, so it was broken into separate initiatives for improving their network, increasing database functionality, further developing the application, and enhancing user skills. The IT engineers had to master and manage many component parts, without information about how to integrate them, spreading their attention and creating significant overload. This resulted in IT team members splitting their time between components and, in many cases, bouncing back and forth between components. It also caused the IT team to focus on the technology of each component, rather than the business value of the whole project.

Segmenting the work and narrowing focus too much generates too many competing areas of concentration, overloading people and the organization and undermining productivity.

A Holistic Alternative

In contrast, top-performing people and organizations always feel, think, and manage holistically. When managing an IT project, they think in terms of the core business value of the project. When managing a store, they think of how to develop a great store. They always take a big picture view in everything they do.

This holistic foundation enables them to be more productive by guiding the efficient alignment of resources toward clear, important objectives, which everyone can identify with and value. From this perspective, each subprocess is treated as a well-integrated component of the whole and anything not directly supporting the objective is eliminated. They make trade-offs between the component processes in ways that increase synergy. For example, a similar IT project to the one described above was viewed as enhancing the ability of the company to sell products over the Internet. From this perspective, the team was able to better align certain user interface requirements with the network requirements, eliminating more than three months of work and considerable load on the organization. Within the more holistic perspective were many of the same component parts as the previous example, but because all decisions used the same core perspective as the foundation, substantial amounts of work were eliminated as irrelevant to the objective. The top performers manage the whole, which produces greater efficiency.

Reducing Overload

The two-hour test of importance can guide an organization to define its work at a level that optimizes performance. In the two-hour test of importance, all key managers are asked: Is this initiative worth two hours of everyone's time to think about and plan for excellence?

Organizations that are unwilling to spend just two hours to think about and plan for the success of an initiative don't really value that initiative -- they just don't see that this initiative is very important. We use two hours as the benchmark because Digital Coaching Technology can coach most people to excellence in that time.

Unfortunately, it is remarkable how many initiatives fail this test! If a work effort fails the two-hour test but still seems important, it is usually because the initiative is actually a subprocess of a more critical overall initiative. What is the overall initiative? This can be determined simply by asking the question: The work that failed the two-hour test is a component of what larger process?

This drives the management team to think in broader terms. You continue this process until everyone says, with energy and passion, "Yes, that is worth two hours of everyone's time!" You can tell when you have it right because people sound and look different. They are excited, intense, energized, and, surprisingly, less loaded.

-- William Seidman