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Is it clear­ly communicated?

This is good because then every­one knows they can change the indi­ca­tor to some­thing oth­er than ​“avail­able” when­ev­er they need to focus on a com­pli­cat­ed task. It is also nice for col­leagues to know if and when they are wel­come if they need help.

Often unclear anyway

But what does it mean when a col­league’s sta­tus is ​“Do not dis­turb” instead of ​“Busy,” and how avail­able are they when it is set to ​”Avail­able”? This is often unclear, as not many orga­ni­za­tions have agreed upon it.

Then, it is dif­fi­cult to know if I can still stop by the col­league and see how busy they are, or if I can dis­creet­ly knock on the closed door if I can see through the win­dow that the col­league is at least not on the phone, or if it will be entire­ly unwelcome.

It is also uncer­tain whether the unavail­able col­league will be left undis­turbed or if some­one mis­un­der­stands the seem­ing­ly clear sta­tus and still knocks on the door in the mid­dle of a par­tic­u­lar­ly clear thought.

It is bet­ter to have agreed upon what the sta­tus­es mean.

Do this

1. With your col­leagues, agree on what each colleague’s pos­si­ble sta­tus means for some­one with a question.
   • When ​“Avail­able”, is it okay to con­tact the col­league in any of the avail­able ways?
   • When ​“Busy”, can you con­tact the col­league at all and if so, which ways are okay? You can of course email, but to what extent is it still OK to stop by the col­league to see if they have a minute? Not at all? Always? In excep­tion­al cases?
   • When ​”Do not dis­turb” is acti­vat­ed, under what con­di­tions can you con­tact the col­league if it is urgent? What is the pre­ferred way to do so? Is your agreed-upon emer­gency chan­nel SMS text, so you know you can reach the col­league in this one way?
2. Doc­u­ment what you have agreed upon in a guide doc­u­ment saved where you can eas­i­ly find it. For exam­ple, make a ​“This is how we work at [your workplace].pdf” doc­u­ment sim­i­lar to the one a client of mine cre­at­ed after I gave a talk about struc­ture for them recently.
3. Test the clar­i­fied order for a while and then eval­u­ate it. Is it work­ing well? Is there any­thing you need to adjust?

Bet­ter func­tion­ing collaboration

If you clar­i­fy the mean­ing of the dif­fer­ent avail­abil­i­ty sta­tus­es, it will be eas­i­er for those work­ing togeth­er to do the right thing, i.e., in a way that they are com­fort­able with and that makes things eas­i­er for everyone.

Irri­ta­tion and fric­tion with­in the work group decrease because every­one knows exact­ly how to clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate their avail­abil­i­ty. Those who need focus can have it, those who are stuck can get help, and those who need a hand know they are wel­come when they are available.

One aspect of col­lab­o­ra­tion has become smoother!

What do you do?

What have you agreed upon regard­ing what the dif­fer­ent sta­tus­es mean? Please write to me and tell me. I am curi­ous to hear what you have come up with!

(Can you some­times feel over­whelmed when hear­ing the pling of a new chat mes­sage? Then also check out my tips on how to take con­trol of the flow of chat mes­sages!)