Management by Interruptions: Mini Not Micromanagement

Do you want to affirmatively continue your and Tom Peters's Search for Excellence? Then practice MBI. A corollary to Ken Blanchard's idea of the One Minute Manager is the concept of Management by Interruptions (MBI). Although we do not want to overly manage the details of work, usually called micro management, we are often called upon as leaders and managers to supply frequent small segments of data and information. Mini management is good; micro management is not.

We are increasingly in America living in a service economy where we provide aid, assistance and support instead of hard goods or manufactured products to consumers. For most service industries, companies compete largely on the basis of convenience/rapid delivery usually measured in terms of hours or days of time. When dealing with deliverables to customers, time or speed to market (rather than price, quantity or quality) is the main sales determinant. Speed and time are sisters and they often determine market share.

A real management inefficiency historically and still today is wasting time and waiting around for decision-making data and information. Time is our most highly valued possession, although oddly enough it is free to us, and we all have the same amount of it per day. How we manage our time will determine how successful or unsuccessful we become in business and in life. This success will ultimately depend on how well we manage small increments of time, often in only a few minute intervals, or "interruptions" as these authors prefer to call them.

Management in the 21st century is much different from that practiced in previous decades. The most critical issue is no longer quantity, quality, price, value, location, geography, climate and/or culture. The essential management factor is now time and its efficient and effective utilization. For most current managers, there are no leisurely days with a relaxed pace. The efficient executive today is constantly bombarded with overnight mailings, stop-in visitors, surface mail, telephone calls, interoffice deliveries, e-mails, and faxed messages. Even when out of the office, cell telephones, text messages, pagers, palm pilots, laptops, and iPods keep a busy supervisor in constant contact with constituents.

Today's world increasingly operates utilizing quick responses to the continual bombardment of bits and pieces of information and data. Both at work and at home, rapid reactions to sources of news are expected and often demanded. Instant messages seek immediate answers, and e-mail etiquette expects answers during the day or within 24 hours, whether you are bodily at work, home, traveling, or even on vacation. Although the subject of time management interruptions has been mentioned previously in the business literature, when discussed, interruptions were treated as annoyances to be avoided rather than as events to be encouraged. Management by Interruptions or MBI demands that we recognize the positive aspects of, rather than the negative connotations associated with, frequent interruptions. If people (subordinates, peers and/or supervisors) have the ability and liberty to interrupt you at any time, they will not be waiting around wasting time until you supply them with needed data and information to continue work and to complete their projects.