January 08, 2008, 12:01 PM — Interrupting your interruptions ...
Big numbers get attention, so here's one: $588 billion wasted per year because
of lost productivity due to interruptions. This from Basex
analysts totaling the amount of professional time wasted by phone calls,
instant messages, and e-mails constantly interrupting a knowledge worker's day.
28 billion hours lost at $21 per hour gives us a frightening number to grab
headlines.
Articles following up this report entitled "Information Overload: We Have
Met the Enemy and He Is Us" released on December 19th try to blame technology
for this problem. Some users prefer Instant Messaging and others prefer e-mail
and others prefer workgroup wikis, so everyone has to look everywhere all the
time.
Once again, IT gets blamed for stupid users and bad executive management. Do
we tell users to spend time choosing Fantasy Football picks via IM? Do we tell
users to put valuable team information in a wiki, then e-mail to everyone just
in case they don't check the wiki in 10 minutes? Do we tell users to give all
their personal friends the number of their company-provided cell phone?
This makes as much sense as blaming Home Depot for allowing homeowners to build
a bad deck, or get distracted and start building a walkway before the deck is
finished. IT provide the tools, management must dictate the process, and users
should stop bidding on Depression Era glass on eBay and pay attention to their
job.
I also blame the Attention Deficit generation now filling out the cubicle farms.
Hey, youngsters, relax and think more deeply than your next text messages, OK?
Don't send an Instant Message, fidget for 45 seconds, then send another IM.
Then fidget for 25 more seconds before sending a text message. If the object
of your collaborative desire is in the bathroom they won't have time to finish
and flush before you bombard them with seven types of "collaboration gone
wild" messages.
Forgive me if I believe part of the urgency with "Information Overload"
is to sell reports at $199 each. For years, users complained they didn't have
the communication tools they needed to connect with the coworkers necessary
to do their jobs. Now they complain we gave them too many tools.
Hey, management: be the grown up and demand users follow a defined collaboration
process. Remember, our technology can not fix your personnel problem.
