Email and work are not the same thing

You there. The one who says they are working when they are answering emails. You and I need a serious chat. Modern work life means work-related communications happen through email in the first instance, person-person second and by telephone third. But let's be clear about that - emails are only a communication medium, they are not work.

Doing work means that you are acting on something communicated to you, and producing a result of efforts. This is working. To claim that you have spent x hours 'working' by answering emails, you are misunderstanding the nature of what it means to work. Yes, you probably do receive hundreds of email, but - BUT - they are simply someone communicating a message to you they wish you to do something about. Responding to your emails is not doing something about it. Forwarding your email is not doing something about it. Passing on the request to someone else is not doing something about it. You are only doing something about it when the person sending you a message is satisfied their expectation has been met.

Why does this grate on me though? It's not about the blackberry culture we're now in. That's an expected way of working now, to be always connected to work. It grates on me because of the perception people think it gives of being busy. Yes, it does give the perception you are busy. Are you being productive or effective though? That's a whole other matter.

UPDATE: Thanks to Sheridan Webb for pointing me to this questionnaire - Busy or Productive? - that can help you to consider the above for yourself.

A great planning tool

As an L&Der I love learning about different tools and techniques to help groups achieve their goals and objectives. The world of L&D and OD (Organisational Development) cross over immensely and the lines are often blurred where one stops and the other starts. In my experience though the two don't need to be that disparate. OD is about implementing a new way of doing something, or identifying new processes, or facilitating a group in a discussion. L&D is about improving skills across the workforce. I'll discuss this in a later blog. For today though I'm focusing on a particular planning tool which really helps focus a groups efforts.

The Impact/Effort matrix is a good tool for helping a group decide on what actions they should undertake, and often in what priority. Let's explain what it is first, then discuss uses after. Effort is defined as the amount of time/resources you need to put into the task in order for it to be a success. Impact is defined as the potential achievement of a set of objectives. This could be impact to organisation, team or efficiencies.

Effectively you have a 2x2 grid.

1) Bottom left = Low Impact and Low Effort (Think about)

These tasks require little effort but will also have little impact.

2) Top left = High Impact and Low Effort (Quick win)

These tasks will have immediate results and require little effort.

3) Bottom right = Low Impact and High Effort (Forget about)

These tasks will take a lot of effort but the return will be minimal at best.

4) Top right = High Impact and High Effort (Requires planning)

These tasks will produce high return but also require high effort.

This is best used once a group have come together and created a list of tasks they need to action but are unclear about how to prioritise them. Where I have put this tool to good use, within the space of an hour you can see that a team readily identify what needs to happen and the priority associated with each.

You can then plan out the tasks and assign such things as time-frames, potential budget, resources required for completion, and communication plans.

Once you have decided on these, it's then important to assign responsibilities. It seems like an obvious this to say but so often have I seen that the tasks have been prioritised but Bob thinks Terry is going to do it and it should have been Neil doing it all along.

It can also be effective for time management. If you have a way of initially creating a to-do list, this grid can be used in exactly the same fashion as described to help you prioritise which tasks need to be done so your time is effectively managed. In this scenario you would envisage tasks in 4) should be given the larger portion of time (approximately 60-70%), those in 3) given a fair portion of time (approximately 20-30%) and those in 2) and 1) divided accordingly to what you have available.