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\u201cWe don\u2019t want to pontificate or solve the wrong problems; we want to get to the heart of what\u2019s holding teams back,\u201d Annie Dean, outspoken distributed work advocate<\/a> and leader of software firm Atlassian\u2019s Team Anywhere<\/a>, recently told Fortune. <\/em>Right now, the holdup seems to be that actual work isn\u2019t getting done; rather, presenteeism<\/a>, or just appearing <\/em>to be working so your boss doesn\u2019t think you\u2019re slacking, has become a growing issue.<\/p>\n For a new report, \u201cThe State of Teams,\u201d<\/a> Atlassian<\/a> surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers across the U.S., Australia, India, Germany, and France\u2014as well as 100 Fortune 500 executives. Dean and her team wanted to understand the pressing issue, amid stalled productivity: Why are teams wasting time, and where is that time going?\u00a0<\/p>\n Every year, Atlassian found, within the Fortune 500, 25 billion work hours are lost to ineffective collaboration, and the culprits in that productivity drain are the same ones behind Americans\u2019 generally declining attention spans\u2014too many screens, updates, and distractions perfectly designed to waste time.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I say, \u2018why are teams wasting time?\u2019 I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s intentional,\u201d Dean said. \u201cI\u2019m saying we\u2019re in a system that, unintentionally, is set up to steal our attention, drag our efforts to wrong places, and make it harder to get work done. We want to free workers and leaders from that reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Workers and leaders feel the same way. Nearly all (93%) of Fortune 500 executives told the researchers they believe their teams could do their same work in half the time it currently takes them to do it. That comes out to 25 billion hours, across industries, of wasted effort each year, or four hours out of an eight-hour workday. And managers estimate that fewer than 1 in 4 of their teams are doing mission-critical work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, 65% of knowledge worker respondents told Atlassian they feel it\u2019s more important for them to react to notifications than to make progress on actual tasks. A similar share said they feel they\u2019re constantly pulled in different directions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even worse: 50% of workers said they\u2019ve found themselves doing duplicative work\u2014the same tasks as another team somewhere else in the company\u2014which they often don\u2019t realize until it\u2019s too late.\u00a0\u201cThat really speaks to where we place our efforts, as organizations, and how much notifications waste our time,\u201d Dean said.<\/p>\n As for how to solve these problems\u2014as with many workplace issues\u2014it often comes down to commitments on the team level. \u201cIt\u2019s really about driving attention towards what matters most, either from a high-level goal perspective, or even as a team,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want teams to have permission to focus on what matters most.\u201d<\/p>\n To managers\u2019 credit, they\u2019re not intending to stymie progress; odds are, most of them would be disappointed to learn that their workers prioritize responding instantly to Slack or Teams pings over actually doing the job. Nonetheless, as with all workflow details, the onus is on the boss to make priorities clear.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone\u2019s working from different locations, are disrupted by tech, and have incredible numbers of notifications and an impossible amount of meetings,\u201d Dean said. \u201cWe need to create more space for people to get thoughtful and strategic about what matters. I think we\u2019re living in a system that doesn\u2019t feel healthy or sustainable right now. It\u2019s obvious that there\u2019s a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n The better way, ideally, is clarity and agreement on what matters. \u201cThat\u2019s what so much of this is about,\u201d Dean said. <\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the matter of productivity theater, which appears to be the biggest time suck altogether. \u201cOften, when we react to notifications all day long, and just show up to whatever our calendars say is important, it means we\u2019re stuck driving our attention towards things that may not be the highest value.\u201d<\/p>\n The best-performing teams, Atlassian found, are those who regularly gut-check on whether they\u2019re working on the right tasks, use their time to make real progress, and make the bulk of their institutional knowledge easy to find and parse.<\/p>\n One of the most important changes managers and leaders can make is to be clear on what matters up and down the pipeline\u2014and then reorienting operations and resources around making progress toward those goals. Or, as Dean put it, don\u2019t let Slack or calendar blocks dictate what\u2019s most important to workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rather, execs should maintain a \u201cspirit of experimentation.\u201d Luckily, artificial intelligence, in all its forms, is \u201cthe cool kid in town,\u201d Dean said, which makes it a handy on-ramp for new tools that could speed business along\u2014leaving the bulk of time for people to do what they do best.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nThe buck stops with the boss<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Maybe you should skip that meeting<\/strong><\/h2>\n