By Dinesh P. Bhrushundi @ dbknowledgey
A great Hello! from ᵭᵱᵬ’the मितवा’ ! ‘ᵭᵱᵬ’ is my initial and ‘मितवा’, a Marathi acronym for Friend, Philosopher and Guide, my humble role to ‘Sit Back and Give Back’, after 4 decades of career-cruise.
The Series Title: ‘7 Mavens of SOPs’ is expression for putting some of my learnings as “seven propositions in sets of seven SOPs”, befitting the mental capacity and attention span, and instilling them.
The first, “7Sets Of Practices”, was ‘A Mindset Offset’, the next, “7Sponsors Of Progress”, was a discovery of the “Promoters of Professional Pursuit during my engagement across multiple organisations and levels.
7 Stallers of Productivity is a practical identification of road blocks for ‘Return on Investment’ of time -one’s most precious resource. Gathered from experiential learning they are presented in pyramid below:
Staller Of Pollen-Processing:
Management by over-detailing not only hampers productivity but impedes creativity too. Instead of deploying only the pair of hands as output means, a holistic harnessing of heart and head will increase it multifold. Not to pick up the pollens, not even the flowers but the entire bouquet is a better option.
Staller Of Primacy-Juggling:
Too frequent shuffles between the Immediate and Important tasks due to external factors or internal fret incites this staller, leaving one with too many simultaneous tasks and causing hysteresis between the efforts and effect and thus, efficiency loss.
Staller Of Paranoia:
It is typical of the loners, who, either due to mistrust with teammates or fear of not achieving ‘their’ level of standards, avoid delegation and over burden themselves sacrificing on quantity, quality and quantum of time. It may build up into ‘control-freakiness’ and cause decision delays and deficiency.
Staller Of Predisposition:
There is an inherent inclination to choose ‘High Interest’-‘Low Intricacy’ tasks as the day starts. This choice may induce Parkinson’s Law for such tasks and their consumption of more time than deserved. Further the ‘High Intricacy’-‘Low Interest’ tasks requiring more, will be left with lesser time. The loss of productivity in the former and sub-optimality in the latter become inevitable.
Staller Of Plural-Instructions:
While moving up the ladder, one encounters overdose of diverse instructions time and again. These iterative, irksome incidents slowly and silently initiate similar instincts within oneself showing up later in senior roles. Getting / giving plural instructions creates confusion and costs time for clarifications and frequent course corrections. It takes a heavy toll on continuity, causing longer gestation and turn-around turmoil.
Staller Of Perfectionism:
Perfectionism, a productivity is a moving milestone that mutates with new ideas and thoughts striking the mind every now and then. If chased, it will require an additional action to bring the work up to 'that' level. But by then, new thoughts would seed the new level and dictate some more work not needed originally. The vortex continues sucking the resources till the deadline hits.
Staller Of Procrastination:
A congenial command from within constantly coerces one to (re)schedule the task to the right time, frame of mind, environment or to similar alibis. These are indeed illusive and never arrive on the scene. The dilemma between, the Bird in Hand- Present Actual State and Bird in Bush – Future Desired State, continues until the compulsion of completion takes over to trigger crisis management, but only after whiling away a sizeable portion of productive time and impairing output quality.
These two Stallers support, as someone has said, the only two reasons for non-accomplishment of tasks: one-they are not started (procrastination) and second-they are not finished (perfectionism). The others too negatively influence the tasks’ productivity during the cycle of start to finish. The best way to overcome them all, is to adopt the 7Sets Of Practices described earlier in the series.
Pleasant Reading and Productive Reaping!
Bestest!!
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