How To Navigate Tech Overload And Foster Workplace Innovation

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Eric Athas: And one of the big costs in the workplace I’ve written about before is this idea of innovation burnout, which is just too many new things, too many new initiatives, too many tools to manage. And it takes a lot of the fun and the joy out of learning something new. And the real risk there is we go from something that innovation can be really energizing and exciting to just another thing I have to, another tool I have to learn, another thing I’m spread so thin.

David Rice: Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. We’re on a mission to build a better world of work and to help you create happy, healthy, and productive workplaces. I’m your host, David Rice.

My guest today is Eric Athas. He is the deputy editor, Newsroom Development and Support at The New York Times, and is currently working on a book about our relationships with new technologies in the workplace. We’re going to be talking about these relationships and how to create more time for people to innovate in the workplace.

Eric, welcome.

Eric Athas: Hi, David. Great to be here.

David Rice: First, tell us a little bit about you, how you got to where you are and what is it that drives you to look at this issue of new tech in the workplace and to help people get it right?

Eric Athas: I began my career as a reporter. That’s what drew me into journalism. I’m a journalist in my bones. That’s really what sort of motivates me every day. But very early on in my career, I started to realize that the profession and the industry of journalism was really cracking and rupturing and shaking right underneath my feet.

And, like many industries, things were changing very quickly with the rise of the Internet and social media and mobile. And I was fascinated by that, and I thought that’s what I want to do. I want to really focus on how can we combine all the great things about journalism with all these exciting new technologies that were coming up.

And so I spent early time in my career at the Washington Post, where my role was essentially figuring out what we should put on WashingtonPost.com. And that really allowed me to start to explore and experiment with different ways of telling stories of producing journalism online.

And then from there, I went to NPR and my focus on NPR was figuring out, okay, how can we figure out how to make radio journalism translate onto the internet? And this was also during the time of podcasting and the rise of serial and audio across, a lot of different industries and professions.

So it was all about figuring out how to translate that. And then more recently, I’m spent the last few years at The New York times. And my role there is all about figuring out how our reporters and editors in the newsroom learn new tools and new skills. And that’s been really lucky to be here because that’s what I really am most interested in.

It’s sort of a culmination of all the things that I’ve been most fascinated with in these changing times. And the changes in journalism have been staggering for hundreds of years. The ways in which people produce journalism and got journalism. It wasn’t generally unchanged and suddenly that was all changing very quickly. And I think there have been lots of bright spots in that there have been ways in which we’ve been able to make stories come alive in ways that we couldn’t before, ways in which we could reach people that we couldn’t before. But there have also been the journalism industry that are susceptible to the new things and technology that aren’t necessarily as valuable to the core mission.

And so my role at the times and previous roles is really trying to figure out how to strike that balance. What are the aspects of technology that can really improve the way we make journalism and deliver it to people? And then, what are the parts that maybe we should steer clear of?

David Rice: That’s it. It’s definitely interesting as somebody who was a journalist in the late 2000s like mid-teens it was changing so fast was like social media practices and then all the different tech that was entering the landscape so it’s a really fascinating role because I’d almost say there are a few jobs that are as affected by it.

Eric Athas: Really wasn’t in it at all.

David Rice: Yeah.

I want to kind of talk a little bit about this book that you’re working on and some of the topics that you get into it. We’re in this time where there’s a lot of new tech entering the workplace. Everybody’s having to use it in different ways. I mean, just think about ChatGPT, right? It sometimes feels every time something new is released, though, it becomes like the hot new solution to everything.

I kind of want to ask about this sort of obsession with newness, right? Because it’s sort of like a broader cultural thing. I think, we’re very used to obsessed culture where we do get very keyed in on whatever is new. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about tech or music or whatever, people are always chasing what’s new, it seems so particularly in American culture, I mean.

So in your opinion, what is the sort of the driving force behind that? And what is the cost of that as well in terms of how we learn and how we make the most out of what we have right now?

Eric Athas: Speaking of obsessions, I’m obsessed with this topic. I find it fascinating, as you mentioned, I’m writing a book about it. There are a few different factors behind this. One is that there’s a psychological factor, which is that as humans, we fairly quickly get bored of old things. David, if you look around, the stuff around you, your mic and all the tools, you’ve had it for a while. You probably don’t pay much attention to them, right?

They’re just there. They exist. You’re used to them. Then when someone comes along with some shiny new mic that you might want to get or some new software that’s kind of revolutionized the way you podcast and do other work, we’re programmed to get really excited about that. At the same time, there is the influx of new things against the backdrop of that is that there is just this onslaught of new products and new trends, new tools.

I’m really interested in looking at patent data and by looking at patent data as a way to really figure out, okay, what is this increase really look like? And when you look at the eighties and the nineties, there are about tens of thousands of patents being issued every year, which is a lot. Now we’re up to hundreds of thousands.

And so you can see just the pace of the invention and innovation has grown so significantly. And there is a real cost to that. Obviously, many of those inventions have improved the way we live, have improved the way that we work, but there are so many. And one of the big costs in the workplace that I’ve written about before is this idea of innovation burnout, which is just too many new things, too many new initiatives, too many tools to manage, and it takes a lot of the fun and the joy of learning something new.

The real risk there is you go from something that, innovation can be really energizing and exciting to just another tool app to learn and another thing I’m spread, so, yeah.

David Rice: Yeah, I think you nailed it there. I mean, I know I’ve worked at a few places where like we adopted new things so regularly that it was like, we barely got the last one implemented.

Yeah, especially if it was something big, like a project management tool or something. It’s we barely got that off the ground and we’re taking on a different one.

Eric Athas: I think a lot of people have been there.

David Rice: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Everybody’s there with their phone, right? You know, it’s like to drop a new phone every couple of months, it seems

The big thing right now, everybody’s talking about automation, and it sounds great. We’re always told it’s going to free everybody up to do these higher value tasks. But the truth is, tasks aren’t necessarily disappearing. They’re just changing, right? And in some cases, becoming much more technical.

So based on our conversations before this, I know you feel that this has an impact on people’s capacity for creativity and innovation. Particularly the higher cognitive load related to these operational tasks. So what would you say the biggest challenges around understanding the demands that are being placed on people right now?

And how can leaders actually free people up to do these other uniquely human things?

Eric Athas: I gave a talk recently on this and I talked about how humans are incredible. We’re a remarkable species. We can adapt. We can take on a lot of different tasks and responsibilities. But we also have our limits, and we have limits in terms of our cognitive load and our attentional resources.

And the fact of the matter is when we reach those limits, we don’t perform at as high a level. And so if we sort of push people too much in one direction and try to sort of ask too much of them, they’re not going to perform in the ways that we want to, they’re not going to be able to do the work that they love to do.

The other thing I think about is, you know, with journalism and the work that I do, there is something about the job that is uniquely human, which is reporters out in the field bearing witness to something happening in the world. And they come back and there’s a rigorous process that takes that reporting and puts it into a story that’s credible, that’s accurate, that reflects the realities of what really happened.

And those are the real intangibles that go behind stories that we publish. I bring that up because as my team, as we do our work and we think about automation, we try to focus on how can we protect that kind of work because that is uniquely human. And then what are the aspects of the job that really are not necessarily worth the time that live outside of that kind of work? Manual data entry, steps you have to take to complete a task, all this stuff that, we all have to do, and how can we automate those while retaining the real magic and the real joy?

What motivates people to come to work every day? What got them into the profession that they’re in any industry? What gets them out of bed every day? And how can we really try to protect those parts of the job while making sure we’re taking advantage of the incredible technology that can automate and make our lives easier?

And so my team, we’re very much human-centered in that we ask those kinds of questions as we’re rolling out a new technology or initiative, which is really making sure that we’re protecting the parts of the job that are core to the profession and also what really motivates people.

David Rice: So there’s operational demands with every role, just part of what you have to plug into. And it’s just part of our work, right? So part of me thinks I don’t think that’ll ever go away entirely. But one of the things I know that you’ve mentioned is that, if you’re successful at innovating, this will lead to more work to manage, right? There’s no innovation finality. That’s sort of the nature of it.

Talk to us about cause I think maybe creating a balance and a pace for people’s operational work so that they can have time to innovate, is that kind of the art of management now?

Eric Athas: I think it’s a big part of management because while we encourage people to experiment, to innovate, which we need to, right, we need to create a culture where people are thinking about new ways to approach their work, looking at new tools and new technology that can really improve it.

And I came across this in my work, this paradox where, as you mentioned, as you encourage more of that, people start inventing new things, they start experimenting more, those experiments turn into great ideas that get launched and get implemented and have a little bit less time and attention to focus on future experimentation and innovation.

You go through that cycle again, after a little while, now you’ve got all of these new things that you’ve implemented and launched, and no one has time to experiment and innovate. And so in a way that the culture that you’re really trying to create could, in some instances, make it harder to retain that culture and sustain it.

This has happened to me, I’ve found this in places where I’ve got this really exciting new tool, and I go out and I talk to people and our journalists at The New York Times are very eager to learn new things. But if they are spread way too thin across lots of tools, processes, tasks, even if they want to learn something, it’s going to be really difficult for them to do that, to even have the attention and the time.

And so I really do think, as you said, David, that this is a big part of management in the modern workplace, which is tending to this balance of figuring out innovation just isn’t about launching the new things and finding the new things, but it’s about the back end of that. And what are the ways in which we can cut back on existing processes and tools that are no longer working and what are the ways we can continue to make space so that you sustain this culture over the long term.

David Rice: This next question, maybe a bit of existential in nature. I don’t want to turn managers into sort of psychologists or detectives, but I’m curious about something related to the tools themselves and how they impact innovation. Last year, I wrote an article.

It was about the impact of technology like AI on our brains and sort of the long term impact of that. And given that it can think faster than we can really, and in many ways is likely to impact or have some real cost to certain abilities that we have right now, particularly around creative and analytical thinking.

Right? So when it comes to innovation, I’m curious, is the use of these tools not somewhat counterproductive to our end goal? Isn’t innovation kind of supposed to be a little bit of a struggle and out of those struggles is where we tend to come up with our best ideas? And do we lose something the more we automate and tie tools into everything?

Eric Athas: I think about this whenever that little prompt pops up in my email that says, would you like me to write this email for you? And it’s interesting because there are certain things that just speaking about me personally, that I do enjoy doing and I do enjoy something like writing, not something I want to necessarily give up.

I also think that there is some truth to what you’re saying about aspects of work that require a little bit of struggle and require a little bit of thinking. And going back to what I was saying before, really get to the motivations of what people like to do. Writer who working on a story is going to really appreciate the struggle of getting from the bad version of that story to the really great one.

And that process is what, not just what makes the story better, but what makes them enjoy the work. So, I do think that there is something that leaders need to do to figure out what are the parts of the job that, where that struggle, that creative thinking you want to retain and actually you don’t want to try that shortcut.

There is this very well known study called the IKEA effect, which, it’s very well known. It’s all about how. When we build things on our own, we tend to value them much more. And so I think looking at the IKEA effect is a way to look at your workplace and say, what are the things that people build here that they’re going to really value that we don’t necessarily want shortcut.

Whether it’s the designer who really loves the space with the whiteboard and they’re thinking through how to improve the experience for users or the sales person who’s likes to go out and talk to people and have one-on-one conversations with folks. It’s a fascinating question that I think is worth posing.

And I think one way to go about it is just to ask that question. And you ask that as you encounter these automation and these new tools that can potentially shortcut to create process.

David Rice: As you go through, this process of innovating and collaborating in any creative process that you’re tracking, you end up creating what you refer to as process debt.

I like this term. Which is essentially time committed to performing process-oriented tasks that could have otherwise been used for innovation, right? So take us through how we better manage this debt and not let it build up to the point that it essentially kind of cripples our creativity.

Eric Athas: Process debt is inevitable. And I think that’s the first thing for people to realize is that there’s no way that you’re going to avoid it. The strategy is not to try to avoid process debt, but rather to come to terms with it and to manage it. Because I don’t think anyone would argue that every process they implement is correct.

There’s going to be flaws in workflows that we implement and steps that we put into place and policies that we make people follow. And so that’s the first thing is coming to terms with, we’re going to put in processes that are not going to be ideal, that are going to waste people’s time. And you’re sometimes not going to realize that until you’ve done it.

And you can look at it and say, this is not maybe the best way to do it. The second thing is that you can put it in a process that just outlives its purpose. The New York Times has been around for over 170 years. There are many traditions and policies and processes that went away at some point because they outlived their purpose.

And so there has to be a realization that something that someone put in a few years ago may or may not be useful now and may actually be taking away valuable time and attention that people could be using for innovation and creative time and invention. I really like the way in which a couple of organizations have gone about this. Roblox has something called “bureaucracy busters”, which is this internal tool that they use where anyone in the organization can submit a process that is broken, that they feel is broken.

And then other workers can come in and upload that just like they’re on Reddit or something. And the submissions that get the highest upvotes will surface up to leadership and then leadership will take a hard look at those and say, Oh, Maybe we shouldn’t be doing it this way, maybe these approval process that requires someone to go to five different people to get something approved is wasting their time. And Capital One has a similar tool called ‘Clearing the Way’ and similarly people can go in and vote, not vote.

I love this approach because it really opens it up and it also signals to the workplace that we actually don’t want you wasting your time, but we can’t see everything that you’re doing, and we can’t see all the parts of it that are broken. So we want to hear from you. These tools sound really interesting that Roblox and Capital One have created, but you could do this with a very simple survey that you send out every month, every quarter, or just an email that says, Hey, is there a process out there that you want to take away? I just sent it here. So there’s lots of sort of low production ways in which you could spin this up, very quickly.

David Rice: Bureaucracy busters. I like that. I used to work in higher ed. I would have killed for that.

You wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review that I enjoyed. And in it, one of the things that you talk about is separating invention and optimization. Understanding that that zero to one invention work outside of growth and revenue ambitions that you might have for a business and leaving as much space as you can for that work that is sort of the one to ten optimization work.

That can be a little bit of a challenge, right? So what do you say to leaders that their focus is out of balance?

Eric Athas: Right. This was an idea that I love that I heard from someone named Marco Zappacosta, who’s the CEO and co-founder of a company called Thumbtack, which is a home repair marketplace. And what Marco talked about was these two types of work that need to sort of live in different ways in your workplace.

And he gave this great example where nowadays we have this really great thing in that we have data on virtually everything. And it’s a real blessing. We can build our organization and our business around data. We can set goals, we can track our progress towards those goals, and it’s very useful. But in some instances, it can actually also be a curse.

And the places where it could be a curse is when you actually don’t want people fixated on the measurements. You want them to be untethered from the data and untethered from the goals so that they can be creative and create something and invent something new. So Marco told this story about his company in which they were trying to sort of reinvent the way that their business is run.

And their initial take at this was very data-driven and operational in which the team was trying to hit certain targets. And what Marco said was, it’s not that the work was unsuccessful, but it wasn’t as imaginative and outside of the box as he hoped. So then he told the team, he said, okay, actually forget for a minute the data and the operation, the goals.

And we’re just going to give you a hypothesis and we’re going to give you a milestone. Go off to the side with that hypothesis and build towards that. Think about that as you’re building this new product. And what Marco said is that this really liberated the team to think creatively and they were able to build something that was truly different and very much in service of the customers.

And it’s a bit counterintuitive because we have this access to all this data and because we are so oftentimes operationally driven, that it can be easy to fall into that and to fixate on that. The idea behind these two types of work is when you’re inventing something new, you’re trying to create something new.

That’s maybe a moment to break away from the operational work. Whereas the day to day tasks, that’s where you really want people thinking about the goals and the data. My team thinks about this a lot with our journalists and timing. There are certain moments in a newsroom where people just aren’t going to be able to learn something new.

Their brains are going to be focused on covering the election or the big breaking news that’s happening. Those are not the moments where they’re going to be able to step back and think differently about their work. And so we really try to navigate that and find the places where Hey, this is maybe a relatively calm period where we can come in and we can talk about some new tool or way of working.

David Rice: Well, we’re getting close to time. So I want to give you a chance to, give you a chance to tell people about where they can connect with you and find out about more about what you have going on when the book comes out, all that.

Eric Athas: I have a Substack and if you sign up for it, you’ll get weekly tips and essays on the onslaught of new things, how to manage new things in your life and at work.

What are the psychological forces that are at play when we’re encountering new things? And how can you take a break and disconnect from time to time? And much of what you’ll find there is drawn from the reporting and research that I’m doing for the book, as well as updates on the book and future news about that.

So it is just my name, EricAthas.substack.com. And we’d love anyone who’s interested to join in the conversation.

David Rice: Excellent. I love this topic. I think this couldn’t be more important right now. There’s just so much fatigue going on. And people are, I’ve talked to a lot of people who are trying to cut back on how much of this sort of like new stuff they’re bringing in, because it leads to sort of fatigue.

We’ve heard of app fatigue, but I think there’s an overall fatigue of just different tools and things that we’re having to use all the time. So I think this is awesome. Really great topic.

So the last thing is, we have a little tradition here on the podcast where you get to ask me a question. So I want to turn it over to you. Ask me anything you want. Could be related to this. Doesn’t have to be.

Eric Athas: We’ve been talking today about new things that can be disruptive, that can be challenging to manage. I’d be curious to sort of flip that around and to ask you what has been a new technology, a new workflow, a new way of operating that has been really useful and valuable to the work that you do?

David Rice: There’s a lot of just like simple automations that come in some of the stuff, like just letting somebody know that there’s a next step in the process. That used to be, I feel like, okay, I’m done with this, and then you have to sort of tag them or flag it or whatever. And now you just like basically press one button and it tells everybody else that what they need to be doing for the next step in the process.

That is nice. I do, I do that because I have a terrible memory and I would always forget to tag somebody or forget, like that I had to take this step in the process. Now, so much of that has just been automated for you that like we use Airtable as one of our content management tools, to get it through the process.

And I never have to tag a designer. It just goes straight to them. It’s now in their workflow. They do their thing. And when they’re done with it, it goes off to the next person. The next person tags me for the final, or doesn’t even have to tag me for the final stage. It just pops up in my view as Oh, you have to do this now.

So that’s kind of nice. I like that. I’ve always found like tools like that very useful just because like I said, I either write things down or I forget them.

Eric Athas: Well, and that’s such a great example because all of that time and energy you’re spending following up with people, trying to remember, trying to find your notes, sending them messages, you get all that back and now you can think about the podcast and the stories you’re writing.

David Rice: Yeah, absolutely. So in that sense, that’s been a very useful and valuable tool.

Well, Eric, I want to thank you for coming on the show today. This was great. I really appreciate it.

Eric Athas: Yeah, David. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

David Rice: All right listeners, until next time. If you haven’t done so already, head on over to peoplemanagingpeople.com/subscribe, get signed up for the newsletter. And until next time, keep enjoying those pumpkin spice lattes.