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[rroossinck]

I've got a situation that's really got me stumped. 

I work with a team in a very small business (I'm one of six FTEs, and we've got two PTEs).  Sadly, my boss is an entirely distraction-driven person, and many of the folks in the office (I'm not there most of the time - I telecommute) abuse this and make it worse, as far as I'm concerned.  I don't think that they mean to do it, but it's the way that the business seems to have been set up (to a certain degree, I'm the nOOb to the staff).

As a result of the distraction-driven nature of the business, he constantly misses deadlines and puts projects on the backburner...and then complains about the fact that nothing seems to get done. 

Last summer, I brought up the idea of implementing GTD as a team, and unfortunately it didn't fly.  Politics in the organization took over, and one person in particular (a salesperson with a SERIOUS diva complex) was the buzzkill.  "I don't plan on implementing any system; the one that I have is just fine," she said.  Everyone else was essentially on board with the idea. 

So...how do I get anything done when I'm constantly waiting on people - mainly my boss?  As a commissioned salesperson who only gets paid when results happen (from the sales team that I manage), I have to be able to rely on the team to keep the committments that they've made. 

Frankly, we've got a great product that really does help a ton of people, and it's a situation where I think that we're successful in spite of ourselves.  This is killing me, and it's making it hard to make a living - and now isn't exactly the best time to be hunting for a job. 

Any ideas for helping the boss see the light, and how to stand up to the people who are abusing his distraction-driven/"Good Samaritan" nature? 

[Patrick Rhone]

I think that most people in business are often most motivated by the one thing they are in business for... Money.

Is there anyway to break out how much the current "system" is costing or loosing in actuall, hard number, dollar amounts?

This includes time. If you can sometime quantify the wasted time multiplied by number of people whose time is/was wasted, broken down into hourly wage of those people and add that up and come up with a nice fairly accurate figure, I am betting that figure would freak out whomever is in charge.

As stated in another thread, I love to do this with "meeting costs". Take a one hour meeting, multiply by the number of people in attendance, multiply by the average dollar per hour of those use to argue for less meetings or making sure only must-be-there people are in attendance.

Bottom line is, I am wondering if cost could be the lesson that needs to be taught to get the desired result.

[David]

Although I'm not in sales, I work in a similarly distraction-driven environment. I think Patrick's suggestion is a good one, especially as you're in an area where the dollars really are the bottom line.

The other thing I've found particularly good in my situation is person-by-person 'evangelism' of the system. Because I'm organised, and don't let things slip, people get the message that there is a way to make all this work -- and then there's an opportunity to discuss how it might work in their situation, too.

It's not always easy (especially when you have people with a diva complex) but it's worked well for me. I think these things often go more smoothly if you campaign from point to point, rather than trying to achieve the final outcome in a single step.

[Jeroen Sangers]

I'm also a member of the distraction-office-club.

My biggest friend is the Waiting For list, which gives me a clear overview of the things I delegated. Once every while (usually every two days) I send a reminder e-mail to my boss listing the things I expect from him. It only costs me a minute to copy and paste, and gets my issues back on top of my bosses' pile of stuff. As he is very interrupt driven, he usually works on the issues mentioned in latest e-mails and calls. As soon as your e-mail drops 'below the fold', the chances of getting a reply are very small.

[fwade]

I like all that was said before and agree with much of it.

You do need the bottom-line reason for change, and how that will impact earnings, and if it can be traced back to individual impact, so much the better.

However, the problem with presenting a fixed solution such as GTD is that it's, well, fixed. 

I think it might be better to present the general idea of improved productivity coming from better time management, and you can show data that says that people who have inboxes that are overfull aren't managing their time well.

If you can offer them an approach that helps them diagnose their current system to see where the gaps might exist, they might take that as a useful starting point, as it meets them where they currently are.  If each person gets into the idea that they can make small, incremental improvements, rather than be pushed into the wholesale adaptation of something foreign, maybe they might be more open.

Big maybe!

[Jamie Phelps]

Following up on what fwade said, I think an innocuous way to approach this is to talk with your boss about a period of radio silence. Suggest just a Thursday morning or something where email will not be read, phones will be sent to voicemail, and doors (and virtual doors to cubicles) will be closed. During this time, all we'll do is work. Then after a couple goes of it, let's have a *brief* meeting to discuss in what way such a practice is beneficial. What did we accomplish in those hours of silence? How long would we have expected those tasks to take under the interrupt-driven model? Should we keep doing it? Expand it to two days per week? Two hours every day after lunch? Just something simple to get the ball rolling.

I honestly don't care what someone's particular system is as long as it works for them, which, when it comes down to it, means as long as they don't cause me unneeded stress. If the diva's system is working but only for her, then it's not working at all. If it *is* working, let her keep it. But everyone needs some sort of system even if it's just a spiral notebook where they write crap down. Maybe you could compile a list of resources like DIY Planner, mGTD, etc. and send it out in a "if you're unsure where to start" kind of way. The 490k+ links at http://delicious.com/tag/gtd might be overwhelming...

HTH and let us know how you get on.

[rroossinck]

Thanks everyone; these are great suggestions.  If I allow myself to be cynical, I can shoot holes in each of the strategies (and I'm sure we can all do that if we're feeling cynical enough), but I think that I may have made some power moves yesterday before I left. 

At lunch yesterday with my boss and my director of customer support svcs., I basically poked my boss in the chest for about 25 or 30 minutes about how much productivity is lost when he's constantly interrupted, and that interruption takes more precedence than his longer-term project. 

What really made an impact on him, though, was when I told him that unless we had a miracle like no other in the next couple of days, I was probably not going to draw a paycheck this month...and that he and his distractions were (in no small measure) responsible for it.  His eyes got pretty wide, and when he realized that my mortgage payment was going to get inordinately harder to make as a result of his failure to prioritize and tell people "No, this can wait," I could tell that I'd made my point. 

Jamie, as a follow-on, I've pretty much demanded that the boss observe the "cone of silence" today.  We'll see how well it works.  He's not planning on coming in to the office, which usually helps, because he's not able to hear the whining and complaining about issue xyz. 

[Jason Echols]

Ryan,

How did this situation turn out for ya?

[rroossinck]

I'll answer the question with a (probably overused) cliche.

"The spirit is willing; the flesh is weak."

[Jason Echols]

Ouch...I can relate to that one.