MIT’s Sloan Executive Education program are doing a series of 30-minute webinars. The one this week was from Prof Nelson Repenning on “How Not To Manage In A Crisis – And A Few Tips For Managing Better”. The example he used was very familiar (using email when would be better served picking up the phone), and he framed it pretty nicely.
Essentially, there are two types of work and two ways of organizing the work - which Repenning calls Work Designs. The types of work are “precise” (we know what to do and how to do it) and “ambiguous” (uncertainty in the what or the how or both). When things work well, we organize according to these types. For precise or known work, we can organize ourselves serially, since the handoffs and sequencing is fairly well understood. And for ambiguous work, we have to work collaboratively in order to understand the situation and come to a resolution together. I appreciated that Repenning acknowledged that there is a flow between these two modes of operation related to escalation - when something breaks in the precise work, shift to a collaborative scenario to resolve and then go back. Work isn’t all one thing or the other. A great example is a daily (hourly?) gathering to resolve issues or challenges followed by getting the work done in a more traditional follow-the-path flow of work.
The challenge happens when we organize the wrong way for the work we have in front of us. What happens when we use serial methods when we have an ambiguous situation? (His examples was of using email to ask question about a policy / practice.) You have a series of questions-and-answers across a method that doesn’t allow for quick resolution. A mode called “ineffective iteration.”
I think the same question arises when we attempt to operate collaboratively when the work itself is known and precise. If we think that “everything is collaboration” then we can easily get trapped in a different form of ineffective iteration - I suspect you get a lot of second-guessing and re-loops as people want to keep revisiting decisions that have already been made, because they are operating in a mindset where it makes sense. But when the work is truly “serial” re-visiting decisions that were made in Step 2 when we are already at Step 10 is going to break a lot of work (and extend the overall durations).
Knowledge work is challenging enough without throwing in difficult work environments. Consider the nature of the work you have with your colleagues. Is it known with clear handovers (have the handoffs been defined)? Or is there ambiguity and uncertainty that needs to be cleared up? Work in the right way for the scenario you have. And allow for both modes of work - collaborative and serial - in your day.