Dr Amantha Imber is an innovation psychologist, best-selling author, and founder of Australia’s leading innovation consultancy Inventium. At ADAPT’s CFO Edge event with our Senior Research Strategist Aparna Sundararajan, Imber shares proven ways to improve the productivity of finance teams whilst enabling autonomous ways of working.

Aparna Sundararajan:

Welcome back, Amantha, for our CFO session. I would like to understand what your views are, or what have you seen, within your experience, in terms of the difference in the way CFOs and their teams function, in general, from the rest of the organisation. Is there a difference, or have you not seen any at all?

Amantha Imber:

Look, I don’t think that there’s a huge difference. I think that what most knowledge workers struggle with, is that they’re constantly distracted by digital interruptions. And I think it’s a really hard environment to do deep, focussed work in. So I think that is the case if you’re working within the CFO area, or within technology, or within any other area where you’re paid, essentially, for the quality of your thinking.

Aparna Sundararajan:

When we think about the job they’re doing, more or less, they’re working with numbers and data, and in relevance to that, what would be your advice to the CFOs and their teams in order to have the most productive day for themselves?

Amantha Imber:

So, I think when you are working with numbers and data for your whole day, and that is the value that you bring to the organisation, you really do need to think about what is your approach or your routine to getting that deep, focussed work done?

Because the average office worker can only stay focussed for six minutes before they get distracted by email or instant messenger or something like that.”

So for the CFO and their team, they need to be thinking about, well how do they create a deep work routine? Which is what I spoke about, in terms of thinking about what is the optimal time of day to be doing the heavy lifting work that your brain needs to do, to be great at your job. And then, having in place the right environment, and the right skills to be able to do that and stay off digital distraction.

Aparna Sundararajan:

Then, in that sense, how do organisations bring about a balance in enabling the employees to let their personalities and their personal choices of work remain as they are, while not impacting the productivity, or actually maximising productivity? Have you seen any examples of any organisations that you could speak about?

Amantha Imber:

Absolutely. So, we’ve been doing work with a big top-tier law firm, we’ve worked with about 200 lawyers. And we’ve basically retrained them to have better working habits. I think most people don’t actually think that there is the ability to do things better, because it’s so ingrained in working norms now that we do a bit of work, but then, essentially, we’re running our day on what I talked about in terms of shallow work. Work that is non-cognitively demanding work, i.e; email, or Slack, or instant messenger. And digital communication and distractions. Whereas, for example, with this group of about 200 lawyers, we were actually able to retrain them in how to do deep, focussed work, which obviously, for lawyers, is critical, as it is for CFOs.

Aparna Sundararajan:

Okay. And then, lastly, if there is one thing that everyone needs to change about their habit, to be able to be more productive, of course there is digital platform and getting distracted from that. Apart from that, just in a work environment, what would be it?

Amantha Imber:

People need to mono-task.”

So, multi-tasking, or task switching, is rife, most people would go through their entire day constantly task switching every few minutes, because that is the easy thing to do. Because every time we check email, there’s a bit of good news, or our social media feed, we get that dopamine hit, which is highly addictive, it makes us feel good, so people need to stop doing that. Because when we constantly task switch, things take about 40% longer to do. So if people can mono-task, focus on one thing at one time, for decent lengths of time, we’re going to get more done in less time.

Contributors
Aparna Sundararajan Senior Research Strategist
Aparna Sundararajan leads the emerging and disruptive technology research agenda within ADAPT’s strategic advisory team. As Senior Research Strategist, her role is... More

Aparna Sundararajan leads the emerging and disruptive technology research agenda within ADAPT’s strategic advisory team. As Senior Research Strategist, her role is to create independent advice for the Australian C-Suite around emerging technologies, trends and investment priorities and developing industry leading content for the ADAPT portfolio of Edge events.

As a technology analyst and marketer, Aparna aligns the burning issues of senior executives with digital business dynamics and emerging technology capabilities to create strategic advice for ADAPT’s Members and Strategic Partners.

Aparna has had 12 years working in the IT services sector, much of it with Gartner, where she developed independent advice for senior IT managers on the emerging roles and responsibilities they face in digital technologies, digital customer behaviour, and business model transformation.

 

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Dr Amantha Imber Founder and CEO at Inventium; Co-Creator of the AFR’s Most Innovative Companies List
Dr Amantha Imber is an innovation psychologist, best-selling author, and founder of Australia’s leading innovation consultancy Inventium. Inventium has been recognised as... More

Dr Amantha Imber is an innovation psychologist, best-selling author, and founder of Australia’s leading innovation consultancy Inventium. Inventium has been recognised as one of Australia’s fastest growing companies in the BRW Fast 100 list, and was also awarded the BRW Client Choice Award for Best Management Consultancy in Australia.

In 2016, Amantha was inducted into the Australian Business Women’s Hall of Fame. With a PhD in organisational psychology, Amantha has helped companies such as Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney, LEGO, Red Bull, American Express, Virgin Australia, Commonwealth Bank and many others innovate more successfully.

Amantha was a finalist in the 2015 Telstra Business Women of the Year awards. Amantha is the co-creator of the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies list, an annual list that Inventium compiles, ranking Australia’s top innovators. Her thoughts have appeared in Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, Forbes, and Fast Company and she is the author of two best-selling books: “The Creativity Formula” and “The Innovation Formula”. Amantha had an international record deal for her debut album Like Samantha without the S and claims to have once been freakishly good at table tennis.

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