A World Without Email by Cal Newport

Author:Cal Newport [Newport, Cal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Who’s Doing What and How? Properties of Effective Processes

Let’s say you’ve accepted the challenge of designing better knowledge work production processes. What makes a process effective in this context? Consider the production process used by Brian Johnson’s Optimize Enterprises for producing daily multimedia content. Once Johnson enters a new lesson title and subtitle into his team’s shared spreadsheet, the steps for getting from this initial stage to released content are all organized in a sequence of predetermined phases. At each phase, it’s clear what work needs to be accomplished, where the relevant files can be found, who is supposed to accomplish the work, and what happens once they’re done.

Optimize’s processes for handling the more varied onetime projects can’t rely on exact sequences of predetermined phases, as each of these projects is different. But the overall workflow remains highly structured. Information about who is working on what, as well as how it’s going, is captured using the Flow project management tool. Decisions about what tasks to add and who to assign to them are made in regularly scheduled meetings. If you’re working on one of these projects, the rhythm of your work is unambiguous. You check in on the task cards assigned to you in Flow, then put your head down to work on these tasks, updating the cards when done. Occasionally, you attend meetings when more involved discussion or decisions are required. The results of these meetings are immediately reflected back in Flow. This project-focused process similarly minimizes the time spent communicating about work and maximizes the time spent actually taking productive action.

These examples of effective production processes share the following properties:

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