Projects were behind schedule and over budget when I started working at SUCCESS Computer Consulting, a Twin Cities managed services provider, in 2013. This was because our project engineers weren’t able to dedicate uninterrupted time to delivering projects. I set out to fix this right away. One of the first changes I insisted on as President was to eliminate multitasking wherever possible throughout the company, especially within the project team.
We saw the improvements almost immediately. Without the distractions of other projects and unrelated work, project delivery times improved. We passed these time and capital savings directly to our clients, in order to continuously increase our service to them. SUCCESS Computer Consulting found many key takeaways from our “De-Multitasking” efforts, but there were 5 that stood out to us.
5 key benefits we gained from our “De-Multitasking” efforts:
- Project cycle times improved
- Each project was completed much sooner than when the project team was constantly switching between tasks. Employees were distracted by non-project work less often when SUCCESS Computer Consulting implemented “De-Multitasking” as well.
- Satisfied customers
- Projects delivered on time always makes the client happy. Because as a society, we expect projects will be late, over-budget, and often missing key components. Consistently delivering projects as promised sets companies apart from the competition (or if delivering to internal customers sets these teams apart from “the pack”). We saw customer approval and employee satisfaction greatly increase.
- Project quality improves
- Simply by eliminating distractions and other non-project work, the number of mistakes and rework goes down and quality goes up.
- Financial benefits increase
- Interruptions in projects caused “switching costs.” Depending on the number of interruptions and the project, switching costs can be costly. Eliminating switching costs can reduce the work hours of any project. In addition to improving profitability, completing projects sooner means payment for those projects comes sooner.
- “De-multitasking” helps protect our performance, our IQ and our brains.
- This is new news. The other four benefits were observations that SUCCESS Computer Consulting observed from our “De-Multitasking” initiative. This one I found when I was reading an article by Dr. Travis Bradberry on LinkedIn. I’ll let you decide what to think about it. Read the article, and if the other four reasons don’t convince you, maybe this one will.
If you are interested in discussing how to implement “de-multitasking” at your company, feel free to contact me at brucel@sccnet.com and we’ll get the conversation started, or contact the company to set up an appointment with our Twin Cities managed service provider team to help get your company on track!