Distractions and cultural mythologies cost us way more than what we can save by optimising the minute to minute task scheduling.
1) Get rid of tasks. A huge amount of "work" done today is nonsense. Common culprits are meetings, compliance, tickboxing, just following orders, etc.
2) Do one thing at a time and just get it done. Surprisingly few tasks actually requires a ton of people to get involved if you ignore whatever dogmatic process procedure policy culture imposed.
Planning and efficiency tools are net negative until they have improved your efficiency more than the time, distraction, and mental effort it costs to fiddle with them. That is something I rarely see when I test and measure how people work in reality. And there are more secondary costs, e.g: getting more rigid to follow an established plan even when reality changes, unrealistic synchronisation promises, etc.
You are noncompliant only when you have been sued and lost. Before that point you are improving your efficiency by just solving the problem and building value for your customers. Most people drastically overinterpret the regulations and overemphasise the risks. And you can almost always become compliant at a later stage, if the risk profile changes.
Sitting in meetings is very rarely effective work. Coordination by meeting is almost always highly inefficient compared to alternative structures. But for some reason there is a shared myth here that is very hard to kill. And it is insanely rare that anyone questions the dogma, or measures the effects. It is common that I see organisations with effective total management and coordination overhead above 60%. It is not difficult to stay below 10% without drastically increasing risk of errors, planning, etc.
Many "superimportant" tasks, features, etc turn out to be not needed in the end. By prioritising well and postponing/killing stuff you will drastically improve efficiency and save lots of work, money, and headache.
1) Get rid of tasks. A huge amount of "work" done today is nonsense. Common culprits are meetings, compliance, tickboxing, just following orders, etc.
2) Do one thing at a time and just get it done. Surprisingly few tasks actually requires a ton of people to get involved if you ignore whatever dogmatic process procedure policy culture imposed.
Planning and efficiency tools are net negative until they have improved your efficiency more than the time, distraction, and mental effort it costs to fiddle with them. That is something I rarely see when I test and measure how people work in reality. And there are more secondary costs, e.g: getting more rigid to follow an established plan even when reality changes, unrealistic synchronisation promises, etc.
You are noncompliant only when you have been sued and lost. Before that point you are improving your efficiency by just solving the problem and building value for your customers. Most people drastically overinterpret the regulations and overemphasise the risks. And you can almost always become compliant at a later stage, if the risk profile changes.
Sitting in meetings is very rarely effective work. Coordination by meeting is almost always highly inefficient compared to alternative structures. But for some reason there is a shared myth here that is very hard to kill. And it is insanely rare that anyone questions the dogma, or measures the effects. It is common that I see organisations with effective total management and coordination overhead above 60%. It is not difficult to stay below 10% without drastically increasing risk of errors, planning, etc.
Many "superimportant" tasks, features, etc turn out to be not needed in the end. By prioritising well and postponing/killing stuff you will drastically improve efficiency and save lots of work, money, and headache.