For a great real-world example, let’s look at the software process methodology called Scrum—where teams synchronize around standardized delivery and cadence schedules, or Sprints. Because synchronization is one of the finest artifacts from Scrum, it should be considered for all types of technical and creative teams.

For teams larger than three people, I find Scrum to be far superior to Kanban or other more simplistic first-in-first-out (FIFO) systems for three reasons: 1) impediment removal, 2) batch size or work-in-process constraints, and 3) predictable interruption cadence. I talk more about this in my 2012 book, Rocket Fueled Process.

1) Impediment Removal

In a Scrum system, the ‘Scrum Master’ has a most important responsibility—remove organizational impediments for people. Each morning Scrum teams execute their ‘stand-up’ meeting. The most important part of that meeting is providing a forum to voice impediments to daily progress—“what am I blocked on?”

We often hear of impediments like too much direct access from non-team personnel, noise levels, equipment issues, waiting on teammates, environmental distractions, and so on.

One of my favorite contributions of the Scrum Master is removing personnel access to engineers. Once a Sprint starts and an engineer has committed to a task, not a single person in the organization should have access to that engineer, not even the CEO. Whimsical access to engineers is common from executives. They have random questions and they want answers right away. This causes acute context switching for engineers. As we already know, frequent context switching is very bad, and costs us time and money.

2) Batch Size or Work-In-Process (WIP) Constraints

When I design teams, I advocate that no employee be assigned (or volunteer for) more than 12 uninterrupted hours of completed work per week. “Completed” means a finished increment of demonstrable progress. I’ve been testing this constraint for almost 10 years. I rarely see busy teams where employees can sustain more than 12 uninterrupted hours of completed work per week without compromising either task completion or their own well-being over time. Why? Because of two things: 1) natural and forced workplace interruptions: meetings, research, changing course, brainstorming, and 2) optimistic time estimation.

By using the smallest batches—or units of demonstrable work—we’re building a highly constrained first-in-first-out (FIFO) delivery system for our people, and also limiting multi-tasking to a minimum. In Rocket Fueled Process, I talk a lot about batch size constraints. I’m in strong agreement with Donald Reinertsen that constraining batch size is the single greatest improvement we can make at work. If we use the 1-week work Sprint or iteration length, then constraining batch size—i.e. limiting work to a single focused task—will naturally reduce interruptions and distraction. We get so many benefits from small batch size:

Minimum queue size

Minimum iteration length and cycle time

Maximum speed to completion (Minimum time to market)

Minimum technical risk

Minimum personnel risk

Minimum documentation

Fast hypothesis testing, rapid learning

Minimum cost of ownership per increment of completed work

Reduce the number of blind assumptions that fuel our decisions

If we get all of the above benefits from something as simple as constraining the amount of work we have in process at any given time, it starts to look like a lot of happier people in an office.

3) Predictable Interruption Cadence

Another huge benefit from structured process control for employees is the ability to predictably interrupt employees at times of lower mental workload—instead of in the middle of laborious thinking and problem solving.

Paul Graham famously explains this when describing the Maker’s Schedule:

The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. […] When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. […] If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. […] Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager’s schedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to.

Using the Scrum example, once an employee agrees to work on a task, they work until it’s complete without any outside distraction. Unless they experience a problem with their work or environment, and they proactively reach out for help, they are encouraged to just keep working. Once a week, or at longest once every two weeks, those employees report in for a planning and review meeting where they volunteer for additional work. It’s a beautiful system.

As previously referenced, Iqbal and Bailey noted in their research that:

interrupting tasks at random moments can cause users to take up to 30% longer to resume [tasks], commit up to twice the errors, and experience up to twice the negative affect than when interrupted at boundaries.

What this means is that if we can design our processes to give our employees a predictable interruption cadence for things like team meetings and discussion, we will see huge improvements in available work time, mental effort and efficiency.

Imagine if an entire team of technicals or creatives was off limits to the entire organization except for two hours per week of ‘office hours,’ where they are happy to answer questions and invite discussions from anyone in the organization. At all other times, coworkers are encouraged to disengage. This is predictable interruption cadence. It sounds extreme, but our HPEs at many companies spend gross amounts of time responding to whimsical interruptions and impromptu meetings from coworkers.

At the end of the day, if our people cannot work efficiently and predictably, we will underperform in every sector of our business.

Time To Market & Innovation

So then, according my research on office interruptions and that of Professor Gloria Mark on task interruption recovery—if our HPEs are donating up to 29% of their day to random interruptions, the negative effects on our time to market and sustainable innovation potential should run deep.

Do we miss the next product launch by 4 months? Does that setback grow grow linearly or exponentially over time? Does our morale deteriorate, and along with it our retention? Does the community start to hear that our company is not a happy place to work, that we are unable to support our growing masters of craft? Do our competitors eat our lunch?

Time to market and innovation are trailing indicators, i.e. all of our great organizational design, people processes, culture, and trade mastery potential will make its market impact many months, years or decades later. Similarly, so too will our organizational cancer, incomplete culture, bad process, incompetent leadership, and short-sighted environmental design.

A disciplined program that optimizes the holistic wellness and mastery potential of our HPEs is the leading indicator for long-term success and sustainable innovation. The puzzle remains that designing people systems for our HPEs can be difficult and nebulous. It requires a dedication to understanding, and a persistent effort to narrow the disconnect between executives and HPEs—who often optimize against completely different career and trade principles.

Perhaps something as seemingly inconsequential as 3 fewer interruptions per day could be the difference in efficiency, sustainable innovation, market leadership, retention, community esteem and happier people.