Recently, I began reading A World Without Email by Cal Newport and enjoying it tremendously. I’ll likely share several insights from the book during our upcoming all-hands meeting, but let me share one here that I think is important for us to understand, expect, and even demand politely. 

The author describes our current hive mind mentality where we feel the necessity to respond immediately to every email request, chat, voicemail message, etc. The national statistics on these forms of communication are crazy, and they are destroying our productivity and associated morale. Several years ago, I asked a colleague how their day was, and they responded that it was great and very productive. Then they indicated they had spent the whole day in meetings. The thought crossed my mind that I had never considered meetings to be work. They are usually in the way of work. Now some meetings are productive, and work gets done, but many of my meetings are not. I mention this because it reminds me of email. Sometimes I find myself happy at the end of a long day because I have arrived at "inbox zero"—nothing left in the inbox. However, do any of us have that as a job requirement in our job description? What percentage of our work effort has been identified as dealing with email? I have never seen this as a requirement on any job description, and I have seen plenty. 

My point is that we must find ways to work more effectively and experiment—be agile. Henry Ford turned the world upside-down with the inclusion of the production line in his automobile factory. He had a considerable investment in capital equipment and automotive parts, and the assembly line is a great way to optimize the use of this capital. However, we are the capital in this new information age. Our minds and our attention are the capital that we must figure out how to optimize. By the way, an assembly line is not the solution here! 

There are two main principles: 

• In our knowledge-based work, we must maintain autonomy in how we apply our craft.  
• We should experiment with business workflows and how work is assigned and reviewed. 

The goal should be to make it easier and more sustainable for knowledge workers to get important things done! Three things should be kept in mind: 

EDUCATION 

Our teams must understand the difference between workflows and work execution. We should continue to talk, listen, and learn about this difference. Dealing with email bombardment is not work but part of an inefficient workflow. 

BUY-IN

Changing a workflow is a group activity. There should be participant discussion, agreement, and precise specifications and documentation. Henry Ford had interchangeable employees and didn’t need their buy-in to optimize. In our industry, things are tremendously different. We rely on one another’s minds and attention. 

EASY PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

We should empower our teams to fix what isn’t working. What is important is our ability to quickly make changes and be agile. 

I hope you glean from this brief reflection that I value the contribution each of you makes toward the mission, vision, and values of UVU. I want to improve business processes to make your lives more rewarding, and I wish to maintain your autonomy in the way you perform your craft. I will make every attempt to involve teams in discussions, changes, and optimizations. I love my work and am passionate about helping you love yours. Together we’ll accomplish wonderful things and enjoy doing them. 

Act on the Lead Measures

These are the measures of the activities that lead to achieving a goal. They foretell the results, because they are both predictive and influenceable. While a lag measure only tells you if you’ve achieved the goal, a lead measure tells you if you are likely to achieve the goal.

For example, while you can’t control how often your car breaks down (a lag measure) you can certainly control how often your car receives routine maintenance (a lead measure).

Let’s say your goal is to lose weight (from X to Y by when).  Stepping on the scales is your lag measure (to see how you’ve done). But measuring the amount of exercise you’re doing, the amount of calories you’re eating, or calories burned are lead measurements. They are harder to get (mainly because you have to be exercising and taking the time to gather the caloric information), but they tell you how you are actually doing.

You might say, “but we all know that to lose weight you should diet and exercise.” However, there’s a huge difference between merely understanding the importance of diet and exercise and measuring how many calories you’ve eaten and burned. Yes, most everyone knows you should diet and exercise, but the people who actually measure their caloric intake and what they’ve burned through exercise are the ones actually losing the weight. This is what leads to effective execution.

What are the effective Lead Measures in your area that you can act upon?