5 Ways Individual and Organizational Workflows Come Together

I am struck by the absence of workflow-related discussions in job advertisements and during interviews. This might be due to my near-obsession with workflows**, but how a new employee's workflow will mesh with a new employer's workflow is critically important.

This observation led me to another observation regarding the productivity literature: it too neglects how individual and organizational workflows come together. There is plenty of discussion of individual workflows (e.g., Getting Things Done) and organizational workflows (e.g., Agile, scrum, etc.), but few if any speak to how they come (or don’t come) together.

So I will mind this gap.

As I see it, there are at least five ways individual and organizational workflows can come together. Today, I’ll explain them. Next time, I’ll discuss situations where I’ve encountered them, and what I learned.

Workflow Emulation

In this case, one adopts the workflow of the other. This might be because someone does not yet have a well-defined productivity workflow, or it might be a demand of the job. This is critical to some organizations, like the military.

Workflow Synthesis

The workflows harmonize together. Maybe each came to the table with similar workflows, or maybe it was easy enough for folks to slightly alter how they get things done to accommodate the preferences of others.

Workflow Hybrid

The workflows do not conjoin, but instead operate independently. Consider the boss who says: “I don’t care how you do it, just get it done!”

Workflow Adaptation

In this scenario, the workflows each change in relation to the other. Marriage is a good example. Spouses have to fundamentally change how they do things in order to successfully co-exist.

Workflow Assimilation

In this scenario, one workflow surrenders to another. An example might be a marriage where one spouse domineers the other, or when a company acquires and re-structures another company.

Check back later to see these scenarios in action, and what I learned about each of them.

**What do I mean by workflow? I simply mean the steps a person or organization takes to do something. A writing workflow might be: brainstorm, outline, write, revise, polish. A lawyer’s workflow might be: talk to client, research the facts, research the law, perform legal analysis, write legal brief. You get the idea.

Why Productivity Apps are Perfect for the Apple Watch

I do not have a strong opinion on whether or not the new Apple Watch will go the way of the iPhone or the XFL. But this is what I do know: productivity apps make much more sense for a watch than for a phone.

Productivity has its own category in the App Store, and with good reason. There are numerous productivity apps, and more are being added as you read this. The problem, however, is that improving your productivity via one of these apps requires looking at your phone, which is the doorway to infinite distractions. 

There's a neat app called Timeful, for example. It learns your energy patterns and schedules your to-dos based on them. But I don't want to have to look at my phone after every task to see what the next task is. If I do that, I'm prone to read and reply to a text or "quickly" check my e-mail. To me, at least, the benefit of Timeful, or any other phone-based productivity app, is lost because the medium itself is so distracting.

Enter the Apple Watch.

Is that enough of a reason? Probably not. But it's one. 

To Produce, You Must Offend

To be productive, you must offend others. Or, at least, that's true for me.

First I learned to put up the red stoplight on GChat, and I got more done. "How rude!" they said.

Then I stopped signing onto GChat at all. "Oh, we must've IMd him when he had his red light on too many times."

My phone kept vibrating, so I turned off notifications for e-mail. Then for texts. It was liberating.

Then, during my Pomodoro, I put my phone on Do Not Disturb so I received no notifications whatsoever. "My own son won't pick up the phone when I call! And when I ask why, he says something about a tomato!"

Then I left it on Do Not Disturb for a whole day by accident. 

It was awesome.

Now I leave it on Do Not Disturb on purpose. (Except when I know my wife is going to call... or when I am waiting for pizza.)