Conflict Avoidance with Multitasking

In my talk at PNSQC, I told the story of a manager who knew that multitasking was sapping productivity, but chose to assign people to Multiple projects anyway. This manager had a bunch of different stakeholders to please --all with different interests and priorities. As long as he said "Yes" to all of them, he avoided conflicts and uncomfortable conversations.

Dale Emery writes a post along similar lines here Multitasking and Conflict.

Of course, choosing multitasking doesn't avoid conflict -- it merely postpones the conflict and shifts it to a different dynamic.