Multitasking is Like Plate Spinning

The place where I worked used our product engineers as the hub for satisfying a customer’s needs. They were the sales people that took the orders, engineers who designed the product, project managers and customer service representatives, communicating with the customer throughout the process. Most of the projects did not warrant full time attention so the ability to multitask was a necessary attribute. Having filled that role in the past, recognizing the value of the skill and being head of the organization I would often talk to our product engineers about skills required to effectively multitask. In these discussions I used the analogy of the circus act where a person spins plates sitting on top of tall sticks. As they puts more and more plates on more sticks the plates start to wobble and the performer has to run around giving the sticks a tweak to keep the plates spinning. In these discussions there are a few points I highlight. The level of skill is determined not by how well the plates spin but how many they can keep spinning. No one will come to see only one plate spinning perfectly. To spin many plates successfully requires two main things. You need to see all the plates. In their job as product engineers this vision can be achieved through reports, formal inquiries or just a casual question as people’s paths cross in the hallway. The second and more difficult is to understand how much the plates can wobble without falling. This skill is developed through experience. To truly know how much a plate can wobble before it fall, unfortunately one needs to have dropped a few. Young people tend to undervalue experience thinking that they can do anything strictly based on their intelligence, diligence and desire. In some endeavors where failure is not part of the learning process, I guess that may indeed be the case. (Now I’m starting to sound like an old man.) The plates in our workplace took many forms. Interviewing the customer to determine their need is one. Asking too few questions may lead to an underperforming or overpriced product. Asking too many may annoy the customer pushing them beyond their ability to answer. Either of these would chase the customer away and the plate will fall. Overworking a design limits the number of plates one can spin and not giving it enough attention can sacrifice performance or increase the manufacturing difficulty and cost. In either case the plate will fall. Responding to a customer’s inquiry in an instant can lead to great inefficiency whereas too slowly will lead to dissatisfaction. In all of these the plate falls if the customer doesn’t come back or the product costs more to make than we are getting paid to make it. To reduce the chance of irritating the customers, especially when a less experienced individual is managing the project, we used a second and more experienced set of eyes that can recognize a plate about to fall and catch it before it hit the ground. This person focuses not an every plate of every performer but focuses on the most critical ones and ones that are most likely to fall. The challenge is to allow a number of plates to fall, providing the learning experience to the newer person and catching the plate before it hit the ground, not alienating the customer. Invariably plates would occasionally hit the ground and shatter allowing both the novice and master to advance their skills.