Multitasking as a Job Description?

“A top priority for this position is the ability to multitask.” Have you said that when interviewing someone, or maybe spelled it out in your organization’s job descriptions?  “Multitasking” is an important part of our culture now.  We talk about the need to get better at it, we look for tips and strategies, and we use our perceived weakness in the area as an excuse as in “Sorry, I wasn’t very good at multitasking that day.”

Dig around for the origin of the term and you’ll find that it began as a computer term. But we know that computers don’t actually do multiple things at once, they rapidly switch between tasks.  We humans believe we can actually do multiple things at once and ignore that there’s a price to pay for the task switching.  Something(s) will not be done well in this effort, and we lose time, effectiveness and concentration while switching.  Driving while using a cellphone is something that most people reading this have already done today, and the cost of doing it has been a highly studied type of multitasking (a New York Times series in 2009 won a Pulitzer).

In The One Thing, Gary Keller’s bestseller, he lists multitasking as one of the six lies that we practice as we reach for success.  Keller writes “…the truth is multitasking is neither efficient nor effective.  In the world of results it will fail you every time.”

Putting this all together for the way we tend to run nonprofit organizations, we only need to look at our flat organizational charts to be reminded that the ability to do multiple things is usually a job requirement. The myth (or “lie”) that anyone can and everyone should do several things at once and do them well might lead us to some adaptations, and here are a couple of ideas:

• Review job descriptions to ensure that the diversity of duties is joined by clear priorities. Can a reader tell what is the most important area of the job, or is it written as if everything is crucial? And consider eliminating the word “multitasking” if it appears.
• Build “the myth of multitasking” into employee training, acknowledge the drive and the pressure to multitask and use basic training topics as a chance to say “we believe that our best work is done when we do one thing at once.” Better yet, offer training on focus and workload management.
• Model uni-tasking. As a leader you can show the way by openly stating that you’re blocking a day for an important task and won’t take calls or open e-mail; put your cell phone away during meetings and instruct others to do the same; direct staff to focus on one area for three half-days, giving them permission to drop six other things.

We do indeed have competing priorities from multiple stakeholders and a shortage of specialists in our org charts, but the myth of multitasking is keeping us from being real about the solutions.

By Bruce A. Scott

Bruce Scott is an executive coach who specializes in nonprofit leadership, including coaching, training, and transition planning. Bruce has partnered with The Miller Group in presenting executive roundtables for peer-to-peer consultation and sharing.  Visit www.spacetofocus.biz.