You know…I wonder how more productive we would be if we really worked to respect each other’s priorities. What if, when we need something, we started with asking the other person their priorities? What if our item is not on the other person’s priority list? Is there a better way to work through your own priority than by demanding the other person step away from theirs? When something is important to us, we make it important for everyone else if we interrupt them from what they are working on. In those moments, we are basically saying that we do not care to understand their priorities and we force our item to the top of their list immediately and in that moment.
An alternative is to not let our issue drop but instead to respect each other and reach out, via email, and say “hey, I need your help with this issue, would you be able to give me 3 minutes before the end of the day?“…or “hey, I need your help for 5 minutes on an issue and I need to have it completed by 4pm tomorrow, can you give me 5 minutes before then?“
Now, if someone’s life is in danger – this goes out the window. Safety first! But that usually is not what is occurring. People, and businesses, don’t typically operate like this but, if we did, our individual productively would increase as will our collective productivity.
I’ll commit to trying this, I hope you will join me.
Let’s see if, overall, we become an incredibly productive organization.