Have you wondered if there was a better way to engage with work, to be more coordinated, organised and structured somehow, thus better able to move on to the essential things? I know I have.
In the following articles, I will unpack strategies I have found that work, drawn from hard-earned lessons I have learned running numerous teams.
The first lesson comes from what I observed while working for Samsung in South Korea. A concept they called ‘Core time’ can assist in addressing the issue of reaching the end of a busy day and wondering, ‘What did I achieve today?’ You know you were busy, but the day was a blur of meetings and interruptions that meant you made no meaningful progress on critical things you knew you needed to get done.
While delivering a technology project to Samsung in Suwon City, I observed that every employee’s diary had a fixed meeting of 2 hours, and they were all simultaneous. I thought this to be very strange. Unable to read or speak Korean, I asked my host to explain. He told me it was ‘Core time’.
He said that Samsung’s management discovered their employees’ diaries were often full of back-to-back meetings and projects were slipping. Recognising this was an issue, from a productivity and moral point of view, they implemented ‘Core time’.
The basic premise is that every person involved in ‘Core time’ must work on their most important project for the two hours at their workstation. No meetings, phone calls, videos, instant messages, filing, internet browsing (Unless research-related), emails, or chats were allowed. All that was allowed was the individual working on their most important project. He said this guaranteed that every person would deliver 2 hours of productive work every day at a minimum, regardless of how the rest of the day would explode.
It was a radical idea, but I tested it on myself, blocking out my diary from 10 AM to 12 PM every day for my project work, allowing the rest of the day open for the vortex of the day. The change in my productivity was immediately noticeable, so significant that I decided to implement it on the whole team. The team was sceptical but agreed to implement it.
It is impossible to fully protect the ‘Core time’ from senior management interjections. However, the principle stands to keep the space clear. Unless your managers are involved with ‘Core time’, this will be a potential pain point, so there might need to be some flexibility upwards – but from your team downwards, you have control.
After implementing this in my team and giving them a few months to give it a good test run, the reports came back that they liked the new way of working. They said they felt that the days were no longer blurring together and were starting to make meaningful progress rather than feeling demoralised at the end of the day.
‘Core time’ will only solve some of the productivity issues in a team. However, it permits your people to say no to external meetings and interruptions, which can reduce their stress levels and improve their mental health.