(upbeat music) - Hi, Carl. I'm Rhiann, I'm a data scientist in the UK. And I'm trying to work out how you can apply techniques such as time blocking and deep work to a broader team level, especially when you've got lots and lots of projects and you're trying to understand, can I take on this new work or who can I allocate onto a specific project?

So sort of quarterly and annual project planning. And I'm less thinking about tools 'cause everyone's throwing different management tools at me, but what I'm interested in is the process. So what processes would you follow? Thanks. - Well, it's a critical question because most teams do not actually try to inquire about what's on people's plates.

Is it too much? Is it too little? Who has room for something? We largely ignore that. We largely deploy, and I'm using the royal we here to refer to knowledge work managers in general, but we largely deploy a push-based system, which is basically push things onto people that need to be handled, that you don't want on your plate, trust them to basically regulate their own workload.

And maybe at some point they'll say, "I don't know, I have too much," and navigate that social minefield. That's largely how we actually assign work right now. In knowledge work, I think it's a problem. I wrote a column about this for the New Yorker a couple months ago that was called, "Why do we work too much?" Now, you really get into the problems with this push-based model.

It almost inevitably leads to overwork. You basically say yes because it's socially difficult to say yes, and it's hard to keep track of what's on your individual plate. You keep saying yes until the pain gets high enough that in frustration and desperation, you say, "Uncle." And the result is everyone ends up with about 20% too much on their plate.

So what you are suggesting here is a solution. Let us as a team keep track of who's working on what so we can confront that transparently and see what the reality is. I can't push this onto your plate if I see you have a lot of things on your plate, or if I do, I have to confront what I'm doing.

I am now putting a ridiculous amount of stuff on your plate. You know, you are putting the onus onto the team and away from the individual to do work allocation. I think this is a critical shift in thinking. So how do you actually do this from a process perspective?

I think you can take some ideas from software development. In software development, when they deploy agile type processes, they have the things that are ongoing on a card somewhere, and they can see their statuses. Okay, this thing is being worked on, and here's who's working on it. And if you're using an agile methodology like Kanban, they have an explicit what's known as work in progress limit for each individual.

They're just very clear about this. I don't want anyone working on more than two things at a time or more than one thing at a time. What's the thing that person's working on? Great, we see it. They're working on something. When they're done, we can then figure out what to give them next.

And this decision can be made transparently and with all the relevant information. Okay, you're done with this. Here's the next thing for you to work on. And if you say, well, we have too many things to get done here, and it's not all getting done in time, you have to confront the reality that you're generating too much work.

Because here is the load. People have these slots. They could be working on one or two things at a time. If you have way too many things that have to be assigned and you can't get it to people in time, then maybe there's too much work actually going on, but you have to confront that reality.

So I call this alternative that you're talking about here a pull-based approach. You're basically having the individuals pull onto their plate the next thing they're gonna work on from a large pool of potential things. And this pool pulling process, pulling from the pool, this is like a vocal exercise.

This pulling process is something that can be done with involvement of you, with involvement of the whole team. It can be done with some foresight and intelligence. Of all the things we have that need to be done right now, what's the best thing for you to be working on next?

So it's less haphazard and more thoughtful about what people work on. So from a process perspective, that's what I would say. Separate where you're keeping track of what needs to be done. Have a place for that that is common for the entire team. Do not just distribute these things haphazardly onto people's individual plates and just ask them how are things going.

Two, have some sort of systematic way for figuring out what should this person work on next? What should that person work on next? If they have a very limited number of things on their plate at a time, your expectations and standards for them executing those things is quite high.

But as they finish, you say, okay, what comes up next? And probably what you need here is a once a day or twice a day highly structured status meeting. We're looking at whatever tool we're using to see who's working on what and the pool of things that need to be done.

What are you working on today? What's your status? What are you committing to getting done? What do you need from other people to get that done? Great, go rock and roll. We'll check in at the next very quick, very structured status meeting. Now you're done with that. Why don't you work on this?

What do you need to get this done? You need that from Bob and that from Allison. Great, you guys are on the call. Make sure he has that within the next 30 minutes. We'll check back in at the next status meeting, probably something like that. So an external tool to keep track of everything that needs to be done and a highly structured set routine for how you figure out what someone finishes something, what comes next.

That's a shift from the push method of just, let's throw this stuff on people's plate to the pull method of let's figure out together. What's the next thing for you to do now that you're finished? I think these types of transitions and how we think about work is critical.

You get more out of the human brain, you get a lot less burnout. It's a much better way to work. So I'm glad you asked this question. Any type of implementation along the lines I'm talking about there is going to be exponentially better than the standard thing that we do, which is, my God, I just thought of something.

It stresses me out that it's on my mind. Type, type, type, type, type, type, type. Hey, can you handle this send? Boom, it's off my mind, yay. We just do that dozens and dozens of times until everyone's exhausted. So good for you for thinking about this. Hopefully those general approaches will help you make that vision of pull, not push more concrete.

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