The Art of Multitasking

Altman oversees all of IBM's business with the U.S. government, which happens to be IBM's single-largest customer. She works mainly with a team of 12 direct reports who each manage an account with a different department. (In total, she leads more than 2,000 IBMers.) Her team recently won a contract that could be worth up to $100 million to upgrade the finance- and accounting-service systems for the Department of Defense. One of Altman's next big challenges is to win as much new IT work as possible from the nearly $38 billion Homeland Security budget proposed by President Bush.

Satisfying customers as demanding as the FBI is a high-pressure job, and when a customer relationship is at stake, the phone isn't the best tool. "I dislike having to call someone back because I can't track down a piece of information," she says. "Once you lose contact, it might take forever to reconnect with that person. Those follow-up loops are an incredible waste of time."

Often, email isn't much better. Many systems require users to periodically download messages from the server, leading to lags that last from a few minutes to several hours between the times that they receive mail. Even on email systems that continuously download, urgent requests can get buried in an overflowing inbox.

So Altman relies on instant messaging to get the job done. She uses Lotus Sametime, which is produced by IBM subsidiary Lotus Development Corp. and which controls about 66% of the enterprise IM market. She keeps a buddy list of 20 to 30 people, including her 12 direct reports and various experts in such areas as contracts, legal issues, and security. With the click of a button, she can add or delete people from IBM's global employee-database list. When Altman logs on to the program, she can see who is online and available to chat.

"I received a call yesterday from a senior executive in the federal government who needed some of our white papers," recalls Altman. "While we were chatting, I shot a message to Brien Lorenz, our e-government and enterprise-transformation consultant. He sent me a bunch of files, which I forwarded to the customer -- while he was still on the phone, explaining what he needed!"

IM technology certainly isn't new: Silicon Valley startups have been using AOL and Yahoo Instant Messenger for several years now. But only recently have billion-dollar corporations jumped on the IM bandwagon. One reason for the recent conversion by these big companies: IM suppliers have bundled additional tools with the traditional messaging technology.

"Sametime allows me to have instant meetings by bringing several different people into a chat spontaneously," says Altman. The only requirement is that they all be online. "And I can say, 'Let me draw a picture to show you what I mean,' " she adds, referring to Sametime's tools for incorporating diagrams, audio, and video into chats. Another feature: Transcripts of the message threads can also be saved to keep a record of the meeting.

IM does have a downside. Chats can easily get out of control, resulting in so many pop-ups on your computer screen that real work is all but impossible. "If I really need to get work done, I go invisible," Altman says, referring to the option that allows users to appear as if they are offline so that other people won't contact them. But if everyone is invisible on the system, the information network breaks down.

Simple IM etiquette helps avoid such snafus. "Start off a conversation with a quick, 'Do you have a moment?' " suggests Altman. "By asking permission, you help set a standard of cooperation and productivity. It lets the person know that you respect her time." For Altman's team, the new system works so well that there's no going back to email. "In the evening, I'll have my PC running, and IM boxes pop up while I'm cooking dinner," she says. "It's an easy way for me to answer questions and field requests in between all of the other things that have to get done."

THE (REALLY) EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE
Marissa Peterson, executive vice president of worldwide operations, Sun Microsystems
Marissa Peterson may be the most efficient person on the planet. Given all of the demands on her time, she has no choice. As the leader of Sun's worldwide manufacturing operations, she is credited with transforming Sun's supply chain and saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars a year. She is active in Sun Women in Management, or SWIM, the company's mentoring program for women, and she sits on the boards of Kettering University and online auto marketplace Covisint, both in Michigan. Yet somehow she still manages to make it home every evening by 5:30 to cook dinner for her husband and two children. Most impressive of all, she receives between 250 and 300 emails a day -- and she deals with every single message. When she goes to bed each night, her inbox is completely empty.