Uber. Indeed.

UberWikipedia defines Uber as “denoting an outstanding or supreme example of a particular kind of person or thing” I agree.  Uber–a new service for getting a ride–is a great example of a business addressing the shortcomings of an industry.  As covered in last Sunday’s Star Tribune article, cab companies have dropped the ball.  Uber is getting push back from entrenched competitors.

The push back isn’t in the form of better service.  Rather, it’s in trying to use legal measures, lobbyists, etc. to stop Uber from entering new markets.  Uber has taken the core problems of an industry and solving the issues.

  • Wait times.   A few months ago, my wife and I waited nearly an hour for the cab (based 2.5 miles from our home) to arrive at our home.  I called the company a bunch of times.  When we got in the car, we saw the problem first hand.  When leaving our house, the dispatcher called for a car near an address which was no where near our address.  Our driver, talked to the dispatcher and said he was “almost there,” and then laughed to us saying, “that’s the way you do it.”
  • Discrimination.  As noted in the Star Tribune article, cabs discriminate. I’ve experienced it based on distance.  Around the same time as our hour-long wait time noted above, my wife and I got into a cab in St. Paul (we live a couple of miles from downtown).  As we pulled away, someone tapped the window.  The driver rolled the window down.  He asked, “Where are you going?” They said, “Bloomington.” which is about 15 miles further than our drop.  Our driver said to us, “Get out.”  We have also been declined numerous time when asked where we wanted to go, and have had to share a fare because the other people (picked up a few blocks from where we were initially picked up) were told they could just get in because they were traveling to Minneapolis.  I called the number in the cab.  They said it wasn’t in their jurisdiction.
  • Ratings.  Good for both drivers and passengers.  With Uber, both the driver and the passenger can rate the experience.
  • No $ transactions.  Over decades of traveling, I’ve run into cab drivers who “Didn’t have change” or “Couldn’t process a credit card.” With Uber, the payment and tip are all settled with your online account and there’s no transaction.
  • Extra long drives.  In first visited cities, I’m clueless.  Especially today, with two semi-toddlers, I’m not researching the “best route from airport to hotel.” The Uber app handles this with a post trip email with a map.

Uber indeed (as a disclosure, I’ve only used Uber’s service that uses vetted ‘black car’ services).

standardJuly 1Tom SalonekIT

470 Interruptions a Week

Business People FightingAfter flying 1,000 miles to meet with me, a prospective client and his team from one of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies kept looking down at their “productivity enhancing” gadgets—smartphones.  I stopped talking.  I waited.  He and his team were physically in the room but mentally 1,000 miles away.

Finally, one of them looked up and said, “Oh, sorry, there’s stuff happening back at the office and these keep us connected.” “Yes, they do,” I replied sarcastically. They were too disengaged to notice.  They have technology-enabled Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) I thought.  A few years later, I learned I was right.

Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Massachusetts psychiatrist and ADD expert, says the symptoms of ADD, such as the inability to focus and make thoughtful decisions, are surfacing in the workplace.  The source is technological interruptions.

Forbes magazine has pegged the number of e-mail messages received each week by the average office worker at a whopping 470!  That’s nearly 500 interruptions, and that doesn’t even include regular phone calls, cell phone calls, or text messages.  An article in Time described a study of 1,000 office workers at an information technology firm which found that interruptions waste 2.1 hours a day per person.  Extrapolated to the entire U.S.-based workforce, the financial impact is more than $500 billion per year.

Let’s face it folks, we’re frazzing!

“Frazzing,” is a term by Edward Hallowell his book, CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap—Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD, means “frantic, ineffective multitasking, typically with the delusion that you are getting a lot done. The quality of the work, however, is poor.”

And while no one can say for sure how frazzing affects productivity, psychologists have long known that performance decreases in direct proportion to each additional task being juggled.  What’s the solution?  Go old school… prioritize and problem solve.

Prioritize:  Figure out what tasks you must accomplish in a given day, week, or even month. Then, organize your work day so those tasks get done first.  Turn off email notification, hit “do not disturb” on your phone, shut your door and hunker down.

Problem solve:  Of course, the top of any priority list should be the most difficult tasks, which typically involves solving problems. Start by writing down a clear statement of the problem at hand, continue by listing all possible solutions without filtering good or bad, then move on to prioritizing the potential solutions, pick the best one and begin executing.

Here’s to anti-frazzing!

standardMay 21Tom SalonekIT