Multi-Tasking, The Troubling Gap.

Several years ago I heard a cute story told to the congregation of my church by a wonderful minister who has passed on.  The story reminds me how easily we sing songs we hear on the radio only to find out later we were using a couple of the wrong words.  Then one day we somehow Google up the lyrics of that song and discover two key words actually say something other than what we had always been singing.  Now the song verse makes sense!

We live in an extremely busy world filled with more demands than a person can layer to complete in the time allotted for appropriate success.  We learn how to become multi-tasking workers.  We try to do more than one task at a time with each single step we take.  The need to become more efficient in order to squeeze out more profit has developed a faster paced work load with multiple layers being touched at the same time.  Multi-tasking well becomes the standard for increasing productivity.  If you do not believe it, just pick up some regional help wanted advertisements.  The higher up the pay scale for the jobs offered, the more they include in the description the need for the person they hire to be able to multi-task well.  It seems to be included in the description as a method of "disclaimer" for the business doing the search.  They want to make sure the applicants understand they will be doing more than one job, with a single job pay structure, but responsible and accountable for performing the position offered as if it was more than doing one job.  It is.

We have arrived to a time that not only allows, but requires, workers to be able to function well as they try to stuff 60 pounds of work into a can that should only hold 35 pounds.  It is what it is.  Millions of people have learned how to accept and become multi-tasking employees.  The sales clerk at the front register doubles as the phone receptionists, the PBX operator, the manager of the price adjustment report of the showroom products no longer on sale in the company advertisements, the monthly billing statements envelope stuffer, the manager of the safety committee and the store janitor.  In order to succeed, multi-tasking is a must.  I am not a fan of this process.  I also practice it at high rates of speed.

For every leader of any business segment, please do not forget what gaps in communication will occur when you are managing a highly-demanding, multi-tasking work environment.  The more the tasks mount for a single worker to perform, the less the quality of work becomes.  The pressure for getting it done becomes more important than doing it well.  Leaders, do not miss this process!  Learn how to accept and manage multiple mistakes.  They are a by-product of trying to stuff 60 pounds of work into a 32 pound container of time.  Mistakes will happen and they will grow.

I have witnessed many leaders place important demands on average workers.  I have witnessed business leaders place heavy demands on very good workers.  I have witnessed those same leaders get frustrated with the errors their workers produce when gaps of performance are discovered.  The level of work load employees have learned to perform has exponentially grown over the past 50 years.  It has grown so slowly it seems almost invisible to identify.  Multi-tasking seems to be a minimum requirement anymore.  Workers are wired to handle the phone, clean the work station, cook the meals, run the register, and prepare the food packaging all in one movement.  Keep in mind, this kind of multi-task demand is being placed in the hands of mostly under-educated workers.  It becomes a competitive game of "The faster, the fewer doing it, the better."  Wrong food will land in a customers bag more often.  Period.  Somehow, the level of expectation has also grown exponentially.  This gap produces an unreasonable expectation.  Leaders often misunderstand this gap.  What is worse, customers do not understand how a wrong burger ended up in their bag!  The tolerance for this process does not match the performance reality this process will ensure.

If you are a business leader, get this gap understood well.  Do whatever you can to reduce the potential for making mistakes.  Add more people, improve your quality, market your business differently, step up good communications...but do something that adds value to the slowly dying art of excellence.  Multi-tasking is not a process that ensures quality performance.  Period.  Get this axiom down correctly.  Multi-tasking and quality performances are not able to dance together well.  Quit expecting it.  The two are much like mixing oil and water together expecting a smooth mixture to occur.  It will not.  Get over it.

Your business pocket book will determine how much demand for multi-tasking your revenues can endure.  Where you land on the balance of this demand, is where your business will honor its results.  You are the leader who must make the appropriate adjustments to recognize how much error you will need to tolerate, when that balance has settled into its place.  I multi-task, often.  I make a lot of mistakes.  It comes with the territory.  Make sure you remember that fact when your employees error.  Especially if you are expecting them to multi-task often.  Dah.

Customers do not like to manage errors.  They are becoming more intolerant for that kind of "treatment."  The world is growing more tense with every month.  People are moving about with more anger, more anxiety and more unreasonableness.  If your business is increasing its demands on performing more multi-tasking, you will need to learn more on how to manage the increasing frustrations your customers will express.  The reason why so many people in the customer world are becoming so intolerant these days...they are workers, too.  They live their working world in environments that expect more from them than they can deliver.  They are also trying to cram 60 pounds of work into a 32 pound can of time requirements.  When they order a "quick" burger at the drive-up window, to save time, they do not have nor want to take time to turn around and go inside to correct the mistake.  Instead, they get wicked off and the drivers on the boulevard cannot figure out why someone is forcing their SUV into their lane with an intense look on their face!  They become part of the problem.  It feeds itself.  It is a troubling gap.

Bad taste customers are everywhere.  Bad taste drivers are everywhere.  Bad taste employees are everywhere.  You worker with some.  You share roads with some.  You deliver some of it yourself.

Multi-tasking is a market demand that increases the potential for producing negative results in performance.  You are the business leader who gets to decide what level of balance you will tolerate in this unfortunate process.  Maybe you have conceded that the best you can do is at least understand and tolerate it.

Or better yet, maybe you have come to a crossroads of thoughts and might be considering changing how you do what you do.  Maybe you are considering to work on creating some marketing changes in what your business actually does in order to eliminate how it delvers what it does and to whom it does what it delivers?  Maybe this is a point in life when you need to look at making some very significant changes in your business model that will risk how you used to do your business model?  Maybe what you are doing needs to become what you used to do?  It is risky thinking.  Maybe it is time to take another business risk, and change how you deliver what you deliver.

How is the current business you are trying to hold up working out for you right now?  Are you adding employees or letting them go?  If your horse is dead, maybe it is time to dismount?

Until next time...