Wilson Ng started helping the family business since 9 years old. Since then, he had dreamt to be a successful entrepreneur, one who starts great businesses  ( he has started 7) from scratch with insight, guts and initiative. He keeps his focus on growing the business by creating value-- not on politics, or wasteful distractions. He brings the same focus to community service, teaching, life and family.

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	Friday, April 29, 2005

To be Interrupted or Not To be Interrupted   ( on business) When I was studying management, the mantra has always been that as  a manager, you should always maintain an OPEN door policy.  That encourages employees and colleagues to  interrupt and see you at anytime to discuss their issues. In this day and age, you maintain more than open door.  You essentially have to maintain open communications.  Cell phone calls, cell phone texting, instant messaging and email all scream for your attention, and a survey found out that indeed half of all workers respond now to email within 60 minutes. But the same study, commissioned by Hewlett Packard,  also reveals that the IQ of a person who tries to juggle all these interruptions amidst work feel by 10 points - the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep, and more than double the four-point fall seen after smoking marijuana. These obsession to immediately check text, or answer email shows that it can damage performance severely by reducing mental sharpness. It validates that the use or abuse of technology does not always result to better productivity. Should you as a manager, then encourage interruption, and the 'always on and available' culture of today's workplace. I guess it would depend.   For me, I encourage my managers, or sales to flourish amidst the challenge of constantly being available.  After all, we always say, the customer is never an interruption.   I will have to accept the fate that when I sit in the office, I don't do work that demands requisite concentration, and if I need to think hard and deep, it will have to be somewhere else other than the office. And for other staff  who do creative work, like writing, or software development,  I have to see what we can do to  prevent interruption so people can have the concentration to do quality work.  I know early in Microsoft, and upto now, Bill Gates have always made it a policy that all developers will have their own office room which they can lock if they need to do concentrated work. This is more than just nuisance or courtesy.  As a manager, your policy on whether you allow interruption or not can be a key to whether your company will thrive or go down in flames. What do you think?   7:01:41 PM     comment []   trackback []

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