Ask Three Essential Questions to Turn Off Collaborative Autopilot

Ever driven to work only to get there and have the eerie feeling that you were checked out the whole time? Like the car drove itself?

Mental autopilot is a real thing. It has a tendency to kick in when we’re a) set firmly in a routine and b) when we’re otherwise busy, stressed, or preoccupied. Two conditions typically found in – you guessed it – our everyday work lives.

In the workplace, it can be especially easy to default to the way things have always been done. Need to figure something out? Call a meeting. Just back at your desk after a meeting? Check your email. Nothing is easier than turning on autopilot and coasting through the day.

But while it feels easy and comfortable, default patterns are also a big source of time leak – a term we’ve coined for the time we all waste, often unknowingly, through collaboration without clear intention. When time leak is associated with your default ways of working, it quickly adds up. Eventually, a dripping faucet will fill a backed-up sink. Priority work will get pushed to the edges, and burnout will increase.

To make an immediate reduction in your organization’s time leak, train your team to turn off collaborative autopilot by asking three essential questions:

Do I need to have a meeting? 

Meetings have become the default move for just about any knowledge work issue. But with limited time and energy across the organization, meeting hosts should carefully consider if a meeting is the best course of action.

Before adding another meeting to the calendar, ask yourself:

• Do I have a clear and valid reason to meet?
• Am I looking to collaborate and / or gather input from others?
• Is live conversation required to advance the work?
• Would I want to attend this meeting as a participant?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, reconsider if the meeting is needed or if there is another way to advance the work.

You may have noticed that "Do I need to get updates from my team?" is missing from the list. Update and report-out meetings are a massive source of time leak. If the primary purpose of the meeting is to inform (e.g., standing status update meetings), consider leveraging a shared dashboard or sending an email instead. An hour-long update meeting with your ten direct reports may seem helpful to you, but it’s largely wasting ten full working hours that your team could leverage elsewhere.

Should I check my email?

Ah, the allure of email. The satisfying ping of a message received, the feeling of accomplishment when one goes out. But here’s the problem: It can take up to 25 minutes to get back into a task after an interruption. If you’re checking your email every time you get one, or even every 30-60 minutes, those lost minutes quickly add up. If roles allow, have your team set a schedule for reading email in batches. We recommend 10am, 2pm, and the end of the workday. Set a norm for response time – i.e., the next business day or within 24 hours – and establish a communication channel like Teams or Slack for questions that require a faster response.

We live in the era of the special project, core initiative, XYZ task force, etc. When big goals are set or cross-functional work is required, we typically launch yet another incremental project. However, many of these initiatives turn out to be duplicative or generally unnecessary; in fact, 50% of knowledge workers have worked on a project and only later found out that another team was working on the same thing.

Before you autopilot your team into another special project, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the work require cross-functional skills, knowledge, or expertise?
• Is the work of a short duration or of a nature that does not merit a longer-term functional “home?”
• Are the deliverables or outcomes of the work a priority for the organization?
• Is the problem complex, counter to the current way we do business, or multi-dimensional?
• Is speed a key success factor?

If the answer to more than one of the questions above is "no," consider alternative structures for getting the work done, such as making it a functional accountability or a special assignment for an SME.

We get it – when the work is moving fast, it’s easy to default to our factory settings. But by being more intentional with how you and your team spend your time, you’ll find that there’s a lot more of it to spend on what matters.