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David Baker

Spring 2011 - The Public Manager

Local Government Cutback Budgeting

October 2010 - The Public Manager

Budgeting for Local Government Equipment

April 2010 - The Public Manager

Revisiting User Fees in Challenging Fiscal Times

3 Ways to Leverage Curated Content

David J. Prottas earned an MBA in international finance and business from the University of Chicago and then spent more than two decades as an international commercial and investment banker before returning to academia to earn his PhD in organizational behavior and human resource management from CUNY–Baruch College. Since 2005 he has taught human resource management, organizational behavior, and negotiation to graduate and business majors. His research has focused on the relationships between manager behaviors and organizational practices and employee attitudes and behaviors. Most recently he has conducted research in healthcare and higher education settings.

David Prottas

Workplace intrusions—when one co-worker stops by another’s desk for social or work reasons, interrupting their task—are often seen as distracting, momentum-killing, and taking time away from work. But if done correctly, some intrusions are beneficial and even energizing.“We read in the news and books about how bad workplace intrusions are, with co-workers portrayed as ‘time thieves’,” says Mike Baer, an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. “But as authors and researchers, we started to look at our experience. We could think of many situations in which intrusions led to interesting research projects and energized us throughout the rest of the day. So, we questioned whether it was true that intrusions are always bad.”Baer co-authored a research paper, “To What Do I Owe This Visit? The Drawbacks and Benefits of In-Role and Non-Role Intrusions,” with ASU Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship David Welsh, to investigate the dynamics of various types of workplace intrusions. Their results suggest that intrusions may lead to beneficial employee outcomes in addition to the adverse outcomes previously demonstrated in the literature. Specifically, what Baer and Welsh call “in-role” intrusions—when a co-worker comes by to ask about a project or to hand off a task—reengage employees and sometimes lead to enhanced collaboration, while non-role intrusions, like asking about weekend plans, require greater mental energy to switch between and are more important to limit.As organizations navigate the transition to hybrid or fully remote work environments, understanding how in-role intrusions can positively influence engagement and productivity is more important than ever. Here are some tips for mindfully leveraging workplace intrusions:Be aware that trying to avoid all intrusions may cause you to miss out on meaningful benefits. The pandemic has given rise to remote work and situations that are designed to reduce intrusions in many ways, but Baer cautions organizations against policies that cause employees to miss out on the benefits that come from in-person interactions like collaboration and increased engagement.Think of work-related intrusions as challenges that motivate you to work harder rather than as an unnecessary distraction. Challenge stressors—things like time pressure or workload—require people to expand their capabilities to overcome challenges. In-role intrusions can act as challenge stressors and motivate employees to push harder and be more engaged in their work throughout the day.Harness the opportunity that intrusions provide to share information and bounce ideas off your co-workers. The benefits of engagement, collaboration, and helping behaviors are often hidden. Baer’s research found that stopping by a coworker’s desk with an in-role intrusion can become an opportunity for positive collaboration between employees.If you’re a leader, consider implementing work arrangements that facilitate the work-related intrusions that can energize employees and foster collaboration. Seating employees near one another or implementing hybrid work schedules to encourage employees to work in the same spaces can encourage impromptu encounters and feedback that act as challenges to reenergize and focus employees while providing opportunities for natural collaboration.If you’re intruding on others, save your non-work topics for breaks rather than dropping by your co-workers’ desks unannounced. “I would counsel employees to be aware of when and for what reason they are intruding on their co-workers throughout the day,” says Baer. While discussing things like family or extracurricular activities helps build and maintain relationships, they typically have a negative effect on employees’ immediate job performance and should instead be held during a break. 

5 Tips for Reframing Workplace Interruptions

Ann Parker is Associate Director, Talent Leader Consortiums at ATD. In this role she drives strategy, product development, and content acquisition for ATD’s senior leader and executive audience. She also oversees business development and program management for ATD's senior leader consortiums, CTDO Next and ATD Forum.Ann began her tenure at ATD in an editorial capacity, primarily writing for TD magazine as Senior Writer/Editor. In this role she had the privilege to talk to many training and development practitioners, hear from a variety of prominent industry thought leaders, and develop a rich understanding of the profession's content. She then became a Senior Content Manager for Senior Leaders & Executives, focusing on content and product development for the talent executive audience, before moving into her current role.Ann is a native Pennsylvanian where she currently resides, marathoner, avid writer, baker and eater of sweets, wife to an Ironman, and mother of two.

Ann Parker

A change maker steeped in valuable experience, David Dhevarajulu leads Singapore’s healthcare transformation as the executive director of the Centre for Healthcare Innovation at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, a co-learning network with a mission to build thought leadership, drive workforce transformation and enable healthcare training through new andragogy. In this role, David helms a team that encourages co-learning and collaborations across borders and industries, facilitate job redesign, drive innovative initiatives and projects, as well as oversee the operations of the Ng Teng Fong Centre for Healthcare Innovation, the largest purpose-built innovation centre with MICE facilities.Prior to this, David was the Director of various departments including Kaizen, Management Development, Organisational Development (OD) and Operations respectively. With his extensive experience and an acute understanding of both the healthcare industry and human resource transformation, David sits on numerous hospital and cluster committees and workgroups, to provide expert advice and insights. He has successfully driven many organization-wide transformation, staff engagement and change initiatives and has been instrumental in helping the hospital acquire numerous awards and accolades.For his dedicated and significant contributions to the National Healthcare Group and public service, David was awarded the TTSH Staff Excellence Award (Gold), the NHG Outstanding Citizenship Award and National Day Commendation Medal (2019).David is an Engineer by training with a Masters of Science in Human Resource Management from the Leicester University. He also holds certification in Strategic Planning from the Michigan University, Training and Development from IPD(UK), and Lean Healthcare from the Belmont University Graduate School.David is a certified Erickson Coach with ICF credentials.

David Dhevarajulu

Bill Baker is the principal of BB&Co Strategic Storytelling. For over eight years, Bill and the BB&Co team helping companies build brand strategies for human nature, using storytelling to connect a company’s strategic plans to the employees and partners needed to bring them to life. More specifically, BB&Co uses storytelling strategically to help clients first uncover and define a strategic vision for their brand or branded initiative and then align, inspire and unlock the human energy needed to make that vision real. BB&Co also conducts training for senior executives and managers, helping them understand how to use storytelling to increase the impact and uptake of their communications and, with that, their ability to persuade, inspire and lead others. BB&Co works with clients all over the world, including GE, Coca-Cola, Relais & Châteaux, Johnson & Johnson, State Farm, Cadillac Fairview, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports, Hilton Worldwide, The Tourism Ministry of Spain, Travel Alberta, The Irvine Company and the University of British Columbia. Prior to starting BB&Co, Bill spent the first 18 years of his career in the world of advertising, most recently as part of the Global Planning Group of DDB Worldwide, but also working for other multinational agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi and Grey. Bill is a magna cum laude graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and attended both the Sorbonne in Paris and Albert Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, Germany. He is an avid skier, a promising jazz pianist and an eternally frustrated golfer.

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