[Brian]

Okay, chewed on this a bit more now that I have a better understanding of what you're trying to accomplish.

In the Jim/Brad example, three folks are spending time doing status updates on an action that's only one of them is officially responsible for; that does feel pretty inefficient. Every time Jim's asked about one of Brad's tasks but doesn't have an update, two extra folks have spent time without creating value.

That said, not every business works like ours does. I'm going to write my answer from the standpoint that there's a lot of functional utility in getting those items checked off as soon as possible. If this is more of a personal preference, let me know and we can have a different conversation. ;-)

Preamble out of the way, I think the main efficiency you can work into this system is to use perspectives to save yourself the typing when the phone rings.

Start with these menu selections:

Perspectives -> Show Perspectives
View -> Planning Mode
View -> Grouping -> Ungrouped
View -> Sorting -> Either "Unsorted" or "Due" (your preference.)
View -> Availability Filter -> Remaining

Next, type "Brad" into the search field. This'll filter the project window down to the projects Brad is actively working on. If you hit the "+" button in the lower-left of the Perspectives window at this point, you can name the new perspective "Brad Call" or something equally memorable.

Edit the text in the search field to "Jim", hit the Plus button, name that perspective "Jim Call". Repeat these steps until you have one perspective for each person.

Now, instead of doing a bunch of typing when the phone rings, you can click onto that person's context, discuss those topics, then make a selection from the Perspectives menu to see the other stuff you might want to discuss.

(If you add a new project that a person is working on, their perspective will show it - you don't need to modify the perspective in the future.)

Hope that helps!