Today's topic is managing constraints in knowledge
work. That's today's topic. Excited to be talking
about this. Excited to be talking about this.
One of the biggest problems with knowledge work
is that our constraints are invisible. Right?
It's true. I think that may be the number one
issue. I think you're right. If we're headed
to work in the morning and we want to stop off
for a cup of coffee, we look at the drive -through,
we know right up front. Is this viable? Is it
not? Right? Nope. I'll be drinking crap coffee
at the office just like the other day. You're
like curses the damn, the damn high school kids
are Dutch bros. That's right. They're wrapped
around the corner. I can't get, I can't get my
turbo charge on. No, that's the visible piece
though, versus the invisible. What's interesting
is I think coming out of COVID, a lot of companies
are like, we need to get people into the office.
Because a visible person is better than a than
an invisible productive person It's right and
I think there's a lot of truth to that the span
of control, you know, if it gets too wide you
have to Trust your teams differently because
you're not able to mother them Yeah, the irony
too though is is that and and maybe constraints
are this way a little bit if you're on a physical
line Doing assembly we can look up the line and
see if somebody's taking a bathroom break. You
know, you can see the cause, but knowledge work
isn't like that. And so much of it is invisible.
We really don't understand what the person ahead
of us or two people up the production line, you
know, up the life cycle. We don't understand
what they do or how they do it. So, well, the
interesting thing is, do we care? Like, like,
you like, you know what I mean? Like, and not
not to be mean, but like sometimes it's like,
We're just we're just putting we're just putting
the images in the PowerPoint or we're writing
We're writing the doc or we're sending the email.
Yeah, and like it's it's it's hard to find value
Oftentimes I think in knowledge work because
so much of it is is is an infinite game Yeah,
like are you wake up and you got emails? Mmm
the infinite game, you know the part of that
infinite game is the priorities Right. And if
you don't know what the priority is, it's hard
to know how much time I belabor the infinite
game. Yeah, I have. I have one account that says
I only have 1700 unread messages. I think that's
I think that's a big fat lie. But it also tells
me I have almost 5000 deleted items. Oh, there
you go. That are probably also unread. So, yeah.
Let's talk, let's talk about how constraints
show. Right? Yeah. Just limited, limited focus
or decision -making. You know, it's the, it's
the, it's almost, it's the meme around, you know,
that meet, that meeting could have been an email.
Right. Yup. Right. Or let's go and have a meeting
to set up the meeting. Yeah. Because we don't
we don't know we don't even we haven't even defined
the decision. Yeah, how about how about context
switching? 20 24 minutes was the statistic I
heard most recently When you take a task you're
engaged with set it down go do something else
and then come back It takes you 24 minutes to
get back to a place of the same level of effectiveness
That's crazy that seems high to me and yet if
I'm trying to Produce a larger piece of work
if I'm working on something that I really need
blackout time for the whole day. That's probably
true Yeah, so context switching a hundred percent
Well, the I mean especially with your phone.
Oh Right, you get a ding because someone sent
you a message and you know next thing you're
playing is you're playing monopoly No, well,
and constraints, you know, the point of them
being invisible too, is that it may not, we may
not realize that we're operating under constraint.
So here we are playing Monopoly and we have a
hard deadline at five o 'clock, but it hasn't
been well communicated. Yeah. Yeah. I think,
I think, especially in our increasingly cross
-functional world, that shows up a lot, right?
Hey, can you get that to me today? Not, I am
jammed up with a 5pm deadline. Yeah, I I sadly
I did that with my team today. Oh like I mean,
well, okay full disclosure our our podcasts are
not recorded at 5 a .m. In the morning This is
being recorded on a let's see what say a Thursday.
Yeah, but today I literally went in and and You
know totally did that I get that for a figure
And just endless communication. So I listened
to, I think we talked about this a couple of
weeks ago, but I listened to Slow Productivity
by Cal Newport. And he mentioned that emails
are the new, what used to be a phone call. And
that really stuck with me. Like it's an interruption,
it's a conversation. with with net not necessarily
any expected outcome or Follow -up unless the
person's really good at their follow -up. It
was just this really it was a really interesting
conversation or really in a conversation a really
interesting like Concept to think about when
a good a good pot a good podcast or book on tape
does feel like a conversation So that made sense
to me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do think that's I
think it's interesting because we don't weigh
constraint always when we're thinking about our
method of communication. And so if I have a timely
response I'm seeking, of course it's going to
be a phone caller. I'm going to walk over to
somebody's, you know, office or cube if that's
viable versus scheduling a meeting and completely
missing our deadlines. I think somehow that's
gotten lost. It's really interesting reflection.
So tell me why you think that these constraints
are bad or maybe even worse than we think. Like
you said, the 24 minute thing, like that doesn't
surprise me. Especially if you're doing deep
work. Yeah, that's it. That's it. The deep work
in particular, I think is the right application.
Yeah. The invisibility piece sticks with me.
You know, you bled off with that at the beginning.
The fact that we can't see it, we can't visibly
manage it. Um, even if it's on our own desk sometimes,
I don't know about you, but that kind of constant
switching sometimes means I have a high priority
item. And if I don't write myself a sticky note
and put it on the top of my cell phone or put
it where I'm going to reach next, I'm going to
lose track of it. Cause I have 17 tabs open and
I have, you know, I bet I have on average probably
six to seven applications and browsers open at
any point in time. You know, so. The context
switching and then the invisible. It's not that
it's not there, it's that it's buried behind
a lot of other content. So I don't know, what
else do you think adds to this whole? I think
just a lack of clarity and what the priority
is. Yeah, that's good. Or the fact that the priority
changes. Like I've been tracking, I've been trying
to be more productive in my week. And over the
last two weeks, I've realized that I've got a
great plan. And by Tuesday morning, it is just
chewed up and I've given up. Shot all to hell.
It just feels like my priorities or my calendar
is winning or I'm losing the meeting war. It's
really hard to know what priority is so that
you can work on the right thing and not, you
know, kind of do death by a thousand cuts on
a thousand different tasks that that just never
get to quality or even good. Yeah. It's it is,
you know, constrained oftentimes is what tells
us what is good enough. Yeah. And we push back
on the idea of constrained. It always sounds
bad. But I'll tell you, if I have a light day,
I waste my entire day at my desk doing two or
three rinky ding things. Yeah. you know, unless
I've, unless I've wisely committed to like, Hey,
Chris, let's go golf this afternoon and play
hooky or, you know, something like that. It's
just a squander the day. And so, um, oftentimes
this idea of like, what, where do we manage tight
and where do we manage loose is a conversation
I've had many times with clients over the years.
And in the face of constraint, we know we have
to play it tight. Then we're on a deadline when
we're turning something around for a client,
when things have broken. and time is working
against us, then we mobilize and hero mode comes
out and we're in a tight flight formation, we're
actively communicating. But we also don't, we
can't run like that all the time. I think we
do need to give ourselves intentionally a little
bit of loose time and that's where... some of
those human interactions. Like, that's a great
opportunity for a meeting. Let's do something
generative instead of just talking about the
facts that could have been an email. That's a
good time to loosen up a little bit and, and
do a little bit of humaning together. So tight
and loose. That is such a good point. I've actually
been thinking about that a lot where our modern
society and modern work does not match our historical
work. Which would be gathering food or hunting
or building a place to stay dry. It just does
not match that at all. And what's interesting
is all of that stuff followed the seasons. So
you had your harvest time where you were busy,
right? And you had to can all that stuff and
you had to get it into the root cellar or whatever.
And then winter came. And what'd you do? Yep,
not a whole lot. You tried to keep warm sharpen
tools get ready next. Yeah Yeah, but but it was
it was not this it was not this hectic pace and
I feel like most knowledge work is We are constrained
by our capabilities as humans And so by the by
the time Friday rolls around most of us are so
frazzled because we've had You know two hours
of downtime in that week And our bodies are like,
check this out. I'm going to shut you down. Right.
Or, or we're in it. We're going to sleep all
weekend because, because we are not machines.
Well, that's, that's the truth of it, Chris.
And I think, uh, stay with me for a quick second,
but you know, the constraints that we experience
as knowledge workers are different than what
our parents and grandparents had in the workplace.
And you simply, you know, you didn't have a typewriter
on your desk. And so once you wrote out the letter
that needed to be typed, it was out of your hands.
You know, and you could move on to the next thing.
Whereas today we type the letter, we call it
an email, and it can bounce right back to us
almost instantaneously. And it can be circulated
well beyond the stakeholders we intended it.
And now we've taken a little bit of a molehill
and it's exploded into a mountain that we now
have to manage, right? And so I think your point
is a good one. I've twice this week, two different
conversations, very different audiences. They
said, we don't know yet how AI is going to disrupt
our work. But we know it's going to disrupt our
work. And it's because we're living in this knowledge
space where we're trying to push and pull data.
So yeah, very interesting. That's Yeah. I think
there's just, we got lost there for a second.
We're back, we're back. Come and fill your patterns
in just this invisibility of constraints. I think
you mentioned it before, just too many priorities.
Yeah, right. A couple of jobs ago, I was working
on this thing and I was doing some data cleansing
and I had found 13 different areas in which the
data was off. Sure. politically kind of stepped
on some toes. And so there was another person
that came and also created a list. And this person
was, we were trying to figure out on her list,
which was most important. And it was, and basically
they all were important of her list of 24 or
something. 24 million priorities. Or it was,
it was so frustrating. It was like, you just
can't like, just someone make a decision here.
know that the constraints are there and either
we work around them or we work through them or
They work us over, you know, yeah rarely do we
seem to have time to yet the other thing the
other thing we have is just Dependencies cross
team oftentimes. Yeah Oftentimes within teams.
It's very siloed like it we that within within
the teams. It can be very efficient Sure, it's
just when you go outside outside the walls of
those silos It can be torturous. Yeah. I agree.
Well, and it's the way we're organizing data.
Yeah. I don't know if we've talked about it yet,
but yeah, the idea of me see like mutually exclusive,
but collectively exhaustive. We don't always
know where information lies or where it needs
to be. You know, um, and, and that is themselves
are constraints. Yeah. That's one of our next
podcast is your work homeless. Nice. I know that's
going to be a good one. We'll get there. So let's
move into some fix it. Yeah. So what do you do
today to solve kind of some of these problems?
I think if you're an individual contributor,
you have to track where you're blocked. Yeah.
How else do you ever identify it? Right. Yeah.
Like you have, and it either needs to be in a,
in a global location that everybody's watching,
uh, you know, in a, in your JIRA cases or whatever,
or just. Even in even in your notebook. Yeah.
You know, guard time like protect your time.
Yeah. It is our scariest thing, right? Oh, for
sure. One hundred percent. And then and then
the other thing, and you and I were talking a
little bit about this as well, but just ask leaders
for clarity. Yeah. You were referencing a recent
Drucker book that you were reading. Yeah, I finished.
I just finished. I just finished management.
by Peter Drucker. And it had some really good
clarifying questions for bosses. I'll just read
them to you. And actually, I did send these to
my boss because I thought it was really good
because it was one question is like, what do
I do to help you the most with your work? Right.
And what do I do that hampers you? Like, unfortunately,
I would love to say that I'm the perfect employee,
but I'm not the perfect employee for everybody.
Yes. And what should I do differently? Then what
do you consider to be my most important contribution
to the team or organization and to achieve our
goals? What are the most important things that
I should be focusing on right now? And what information
do you need from me? How often and in what format?
And I actually just realized this year that there
are verbal people, there are written people.
And if you communicate verbally to a written,
to someone who likes to consume written, they
will, you will miss it. The message doesn't land.
It just doesn't, they're like, it has to be written.
And, and, and they, you know, the, the ones that
have high EQ get that and they will be like,
Oh, because that's what I need. And they surround
themselves with this infrastructure that supports
that. But sometimes people don't know. And it's
like, well, you don't know. And both parties
just think they're idiots. And you're like, no,
you're communicating in the wrong style here.
Yeah. No, that's good. All right. What should
managers do? I think they should stop planning
at 100%. Nobody's going to operate 40 hours out
of 40 hours a week. No, this just doesn't happen.
Maybe 80%. Like Aim for quality not for quantity.
Well, and even I would even go back It goes back
to these priorities Yeah, you know if you have
a team and you know that you have three big things
this week the most effective teams I've worked
on is when a manager says this week Can we accomplish
these three big things? Yep, because they add
up, right? But if what you're trying to do is
micromanage hours in and hours out It's a fool's
errand. It's an infinite problem again. An infinite
number of ways to squander all that valuable
time and you still don't get the output. Yeah.
I think the other is just look for bottlenecks.
Yeah. And I think this goes a little bit back
to last time where we just talked about, you
know, the, I don't know, just the unseen nature.
Yeah. And I think I think being able to visualize
what's going on. And I think one easy way to
do this is just to say, show me where you found
that. The other bottleneck, not just data, but
I think about the communication piece. Oftentimes
the constraint is the way that somebody interacts
with the communication chain. So if you're finding
that the emails they forward are a day, two days,
three days old, It's no surprise you're blowing
deadlines. There's a timeliness piece there.
So, yeah, the bottlenecks is different than a
witch hunt because oftentimes it's a lack of
understanding about the critical role they play.
Yep. So that's a great one. And then the last
one is just stop rewarding heroics. The last
minute, you know, I came in at the last I worked
all weekend firefighting culture. Yeah, it just
does not work. It serves no one. Yeah, that's
a great call out. Chris, I think that those are
excellent, both for individuals and managers.
We know constraints are real. Oftentimes they
help us do incredible things because they force
us to think differently, but we have to acknowledge
that they're. 100%. Cool, man. We did it again.
Make that invisible visible. That's right. Shine
a little light on it. All right. See ya.