Knowing What You Need to Know

Blockers can take a tiny task and stretch it over days or weeks. Taking a moment at the beginning of a project to look for and prevent possible blockers can improve productivity. These examples of personal, team, and organizational levels show how gathering the right information and performing preflight checks can save hours of wasted time later. Two IT workers--Andrew and Bertie (not their real names)--were assigned the same task. While this task should have taken about an hour of hands-on keyboard work, it took Andrew four days. Andrew began the task one sunny Monday morning. Work went well until he hit a speed bump and needed to ask the requester (who we will call Roger) a question. Andrew tried to find him on the company chat system, only to learn Roger was out of the office. Andrew sent an email instead.