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Beyond Black Box Management

calnewport.com

47 pointsimartin2k6 comments

Email can be self-managed. A popular productivity technique that Cal has recommended himself is batching: setting aside a fixed time to take care of a task like email, rather than haphazardly context switching to email throughout the day.

Why does an organization need to enforce what can be taught and incentivized on an individual level by offering higher productivity (and thus higher compensation/gratification in the black box model)? Don’t artificially inflate your theory, Cal! It’s interesting and useful as-is.

It might not need to be enforced, but it should probably be encouraged or at least advertised as permissible. There's a horrifyingly large number of workplaces where not responding up to a non-urgent email / IM within an hour or so will trigger follow-up calls or queries to a manager.

Save us from the Peter Potamuses of the world...

http://harveybirdman.wikia.com/wiki/Peter_Potamus

A little reversal from the manager's perspective...

Isn't it the team's productivity the manager's responsibility. And if one player is not playing the game so to speak (holding / blocking a flow of information for an hour even if it is non-urgent) then shouldnt they follow up? Maybe not after one time... But, it seems the right thing to do from the manager's perspective?

I understand your perspective, but it's, I believe, short-sighted.

First, it's generally a management failure if there's routinely questions to be answered or information requested that needs to be answered within an hour. Whether that's a planning failure, or a documentation failure, or whatever it may be, that underlying problem should be addressed because...

Knowledge workers benefit greatly from being able to enter a state of deep concentration. When I'm interrupted while I'm working, it's going to take time for me to get back into the state of mind I was in before the interruption. Cal Newport (the author of the post) has written a lot about this with his "Deep Work" material. Yesterday, for example, I was interrupted 3 times while trying to watch a 15 minute video related to a problem I was trying to solve; how well do you think I absorbed that material compared to being able to learn it uninterrupted? When I'm debugging a tricky problem, it's very likely that I have a pile of conscious and subconscious thoughts going on in my head; if I have to switch and answer an email (or have my manager come and ask me a question), all of that context evaporates and I have to start over.

So, yes, from the manager's perspective it seems like a good choice, but it's very likely going to be highly disruptive to the person being asked.

Agreed. There’s little downside in a cultural shift promoting deep work.

Fog Creek is a nice case study. Everyone gets their own office with a door.

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