Knowing barriers in interactions boosts productivity

Most of the organizations around the world face the difficulty in raising the productivity of the knowledge workers. The organizations struggle to improve the effectiveness of managers, salespeople, scientists, and others whose jobs consist primarily of interactions - with other employees, customers, and suppliers. The key to boost productivity is to identify and address the barriers they face in their interactions.

Many executives have confusion about what it takes to bolster productivity for knowledge workers. This lack of clarity is partly because knowledge work involves more diverse and amorphous tasks than only production. Similarly, performance metrics are hard to come by in knowledge work, making it challenging to manage improvement efforts.

According to a research, since knowledge workers spend half their time on interactions, companies should first explore the productivity barriers that impede these interactions. The study said that among companies surveyed, almost half of the interactions are constrained by one of five barriers: physical, technical, social or cultural, contextual, and temporal.

Physical barriers (including geographic distance and differences in time zones) often go hand in hand with technical barriers because the lack of effective tools for locating the right people and collaborating becomes even more pronounced when they are far away.

Examples of social or cultural barriers include rigid hierarchy or ineffective incentives that don't spur the right people to engage. To avoid such problems, Petrobras, the Brazil-based oil major, created a series of case studies focused on real events in the company?s past that illuminate its values, processes, and norms. The cases are discussed with new hires in small groups, promoting a better understanding of how the organization works and encouraging a culture of knowledge sharing and collaborative problem solving.

Employees who face contextual barriers struggle to share and translate knowledge obtained from colleagues in different fields. Complex interactions often require contact with people in other departments or divisions, making it hard for workers to assess a colleague?s level of expertise or apply the advice they may receive.

To overcome contextual barriers, organizations can rotate employees across teams and divisions or create forums where specialists in different areas can learn about one another's work. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for instance, holds a biannual 'Masters Forum' to share knowledge across disciplines. About 50 employees from different parts of the agency attend the meetings to hear other NASA colleagues talk about the tools, methods, and skills they use in extremely complex projects. The sessions are lightly moderated and very interactive.

The final barrier is time, or rather the perceived lack of it. If valuable interactions are falling victim to time constraints, executives can use job roles and responsibilities to help identify the employees that knowledge workers should be interacting with and on what topics. In some cases, companies may need to clarify decision rights and redefine roles to reduce the interaction burden on some employees while increasing it on others.

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