Productivity is king, I have noticed I am most productive when isolated with controlled connectivity. Let me explain. By controlled connectivity I’m referring to having control in who connects to me and when. In this situation people can’t get me immediately on a land line, mobile, Skype or Instant Messenger but they can send me e-mails, leave voice mails or a message with our receptionist. This means I can work on that one thing I really need to get done.

Labs developers in our business have to get in a ‘zone’. I’m guilty of exploring ideas with our labs developers, which interrupts them out of their zone. This definitely has benefits for the business because we can get a quick, highly qualified feedback on IP allowing management to get new information that helps us decide whether to drop the idea or keep exploring it further. But what’s the hidden cost?

Where I used to work in an investment bank trading floor it was interruption extremes. Multiple phone lines going, sales people asking for prices, brokers shouting down open voice lines. Zero zone time. Coupled with other peoples conversations, laughter, TV’s blaring CNN or Bloomberg it all made for a testy space to think. You couldn’t write VB spreadsheet macro until after hours when it was quieter. You couldn’t think up interesting structured products or trading ideas during work hours. I used to do that late at night or 2am in the morning in front of the PC. That was my zone time.

I’m more and more convinced that some of the answers to solving this issue are in controlling the environment by having rules of interruption. Secondly, looking at it case by case. Asking ourselves who disrupts and why. Is it lack of training? Is it something they do to distract themselves? Is it to impress?

Great ideas in life come to you when you are thinking in chess mode. 3 steps ahead isn’t easy when you have a barrage of people and device interruption.

Dealing with interruptions

Self interruption - the shoulder devil

Let’s start with the least admitted but most common - You! Yes it’s you, that little voice in your head that says “go and get a coffee” or “no don’t do this task its boring, do something fun” or my favourite “that can wait until tomorrow”. This little shoulder devil is your worst interrupter of all. He will take you away from that task at hand that you had diligently decided was important. Probably a task that you scheduled and planned to do. Recognise this interrupter and give him the “Shh! Shh! Shh!”. (Picture Doctor Evil (Austin Powers) giving his son Scott the. Shh! Shh! Shh!)

Get questions into a forum or queue

This allows the answerer to answer in their own time. It allows other people to answer the questions which helps with turnaround time for the questioner. It allows prioritisation by a project manager, team leader or the like.

Improve information availability

How easily can someone find an answer to something in your organisation? For example if someone has a broken printer can they find the warranty themselves or do they need to ask someone? If a new sales person has a question about their client that goes back to when their boss used to look after them can they get notes on his conversations? Do you have access to original voice mails or emails for those conversations and negotiations? Systems answer these question, people don’t need to. The more available something is the less chance there is someone will need to interrupt you. We attach warranties, licenses, brochures or even voice mails and contracts against their related transactions in Saasu.

Search first, ask questions later

Create a culture where people “search first and ask question later” or try their own research path before disrupting people. Train them to assess the cost benefit of research versus asking. It’s quite simple really. If you spend 5 minutes and can’t even find a clue then maybe you should interrupt or log a support inquiry and move onto something else in the meantime.

You can scale interruption to your benefit

When you right down an answer to a question you can reproduce it a million times. When you speak it it’s lost forever. Procedure manuals and corporate intranets might seem a bit like a waste of time for smaller businesses but that attitude is most likely coming from a place of “sales is more important than anything” or “building my widgets comes first”. The reality is that most of us can type at least half as fast as we speak. Accordingly an answer to a question can be written on the fly. Simply adopt the policy that if the question is likely to be asked again that you answer it in writing instead of voice. Copy and paste to you intranet, wiki, faq, procedures manual or help system. This solves the problem for future people asking the same question and is a ready supply of training content for your organisation. Make sure this system is searchable.

Capture lots of info upfront BUT do it efficiently

I’ve lost count of how many times someone has asked me an accounting question for info that could easily have been gotten if the information had been available to them online. This was obviously a major reason we built Saasu as an online system and more recently the reason we are building in Employee Self Service (ESS). Actively build ways for people to solve the problems. By doing this you are coincidently getting more resource as interruption falls in your organisation.

Boomerang interruption

You throw a promise in the air only to have it come back and hit you in the back of the head. You say you’ll do something and you don’t so a person later interrupts you to call you on your promise (and probably at an inconvenient time for you). Not phoning customers or suppliers back has the same effect. They ring you and guess what, it’s probably not at a great time but being a service oriented business you have to drop it and help them.

The multi-tasker

The multi-tasker can have too much on the go at once that it becomes very inefficient causing self interruption. This person will really notice the difference when they are forced to work on one thing due to a circumstance. This happens to me when I take my kids swimming. I only have my Blackberry an accordingly I half an hour of uninterrupted email answering and archiving. I get more email done in this half hour than I do all day in the office.

Device interruption

Devices are just like people but just more persistent. People know sometimes to leave you alone when you have the “grumpies” on your face. However your phone couldn’t care less. It will buzz until you through it across the room. Limiting how devices interrupt you is my number one tip. It may have a slight accessibility cost but the net output you pickup helps more people and more powerfully, in a leveraged kind of way. It’s simply better, try it.

Turn interruptions into a serial stream instead of a parallel onslaught

A good example is a big todo list. Often you’ll have things people have asked you to do, little interruptions during the day can end up creating a big to do list for you. We’ll get straight with the interrupter. Tell them you’ll get back to them but I’m not sure when (I put them on my do later list which doesn’t have a time line).

Multi-tasking leave no room for interruption

If your a good multi-tasker you can get a lot done. The problem is that multi-tasking in itself is a skill. You are doing several things at once, it requires mental and physical agility. The question is can you take the interrupter throwing you an extra ball to juggle or is five balls your limit? Leave a little room for “overflow workload” as I call it.

Preventing interruption frustration

This one can really make a persons day miserable. If everyone comes to you because you know your u-know-what then you start to feel irritated, used, resentful (that you are continually saving the disrupter) etc. I have seen very good people leave organisations because their success has lead them to be an authority and accordingly they become everyone’s help desk for all their problems. Now that job begins to weary very quickly. Identify staff who like like becoming a victim of this and act fast.

Do hotel’s have the patent on a “Do Not Disturb” sign?

I don’t understand why we don’t use these more. We can do it with Skype and a hotel room but that’s about it. Get one for your office door to give you that hour you need on a mentally critical task. E-mail needs a virtual secretary it in my opinion. A great feature for a e-mail client would be an auto responder that tells you what the average reply time of the recipient is and not to expect an immediate answer. In sales this is a big no no though. There’s nothing stopping you responding with a 20 second email that reads “Thanks Jim. I’m just working on something. Back to you soon.” At least then they know you are busy and you have managed their expectation about getting an answer.

Is it really urgent

Have people learned to ask themselves this question before they interrupt someone who’s obviously in deep thought or occupied with something that would have them better left alone for the moment.

Are they really asking the right person

Are they asking the person who’s nice and helpful or are they asking the person who knows the best answer? This is what creates helpful person syndrome that leads to the helper sometimes, flipping their lid and leaving as everyone piles their problems on them.

Interruption overload

You have so many interruptions and problems of your own that you enter a weird realm of not being bale to prioritize. You focus is so shattered by all the interruption that you can’t think clearly. I imagine it’s a bit like a shell shock. I used to get this in my younger days but the trading floor environment taught me triage techniques which help you get around this. What you do is you stop, better still isolate yourself. an ask this one question 3 times. The repetition clears the mind. “What’s the No1 Priority? What’s the No1 Priority? What’s the No1 Priority?”. It will come to you pretty quickly after this because you have altered you mind trajectory. Just prior to doing this the little voice in you head is asking just as many questions as it’s hearing. This “question noise” in your head is the problem.

Cure for interruption-itis

People who have been interrupted one to many times get this disease. It makes them angry, blame the interrupter and just want to leave their job. The cure is to get a combi-van and go on a surfing holiday!

Got any more? Let us know.