The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Batch­ing or ​“qui­et hours”

The Swiss-Ger­man research team Käs­er, Fis­chbach­er, König and Klein­mann con­duct­ed a study not too long ago where they looked at how the effi­cien­cy of the helper, as well as the per­son being helped, was influ­enced by dif­fer­ent ways of struc­tur­ing the way help was asked for. The dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions test­ed were:
a) you ask for help freely, at any time, and as much as you want

b) you ask for help freely, except for dur­ing cer­tain des­ig­nat­ed ​“qui­et hours” when we do not ask each oth­er any­thing, but only focus on per­form­ing our own tasks

c) you ask for help freely, but bun­dle a few ques­tions in a batch before asking

The researchers found that alter­na­tive c), to bun­dle or batch sev­er­al ques­tions up before ask­ing, was the most ben­e­fi­cial way to go in terms of affect­ing both par­ties’ effi­cien­cy pos­i­tive­ly — more so than when they had set aside qui­et hours, as in option b), when they would be guar­an­teed the focus they need­ed to do their work.

It did not come as a sur­prise that option a), ask­ing for help at any time, was the worst alter­na­tive for the col­lec­tive effi­cien­cy of both parties.

If you want to look clos­er at the study and find out what lies behind these par­tic­u­lar results, it is called ​”Help­ing as Mun­dane Knowl­edge Shar­ing: Do Bun­dled Help Request and Qui­et Time Increase Per­for­mance?”.

Do this

If you want to put the researchers’ con­clu­sions to good use, then do this:

1. Dur­ing the next meet­ing with your col­leagues; sug­gest that you try bundling and batch­ing ques­tions before ask­ing one anoth­er for help to the great­est extent pos­si­ble, for a while, per­haps a few weeks. Refer to the study if you want some sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to lean on.
2. After the tri­al, eval­u­ate togeth­er and dis­cuss how you expe­ri­enced this way of work­ing. Did it suit your team? Or, can you adjust your method a lit­tle to make it even better?

Become more effi­cient together

If you and your col­leagues batch ques­tions before ask­ing one anoth­er for help, all of you will become more effi­cient than if you ask ques­tions as soon as they arise — at least if we are to trust the researchers men­tioned above.

I might also add that batch­ing ques­tions did not low­er the effi­cien­cy of the per­son ask­ing for help. It did, how­ev­er, sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the effi­cien­cy of the per­son being asked to help. And as we all know: some­times we are the one receiv­ing help, and some­times we are giv­ing it. But all in all, this method will increase the effi­cien­cy of the whole team or office!

What is your way?

How have you solved this par­tic­u­lar dilem­ma at your com­pa­ny or office? Have you agreed upon some­thing spe­cial regard­ing when, how and where to ask each oth­er for help? Many strug­gle with this kind of prob­lems. Help them (and me!) by shar­ing your way in an email to me.

(Do you know how to get a swift answer to a tricky ques­tion?)