Overload – It’s Time To Save Your Sanity

You can also watch this article as a video – click here.  5 mins, with captions.

There’s a disease afflicting everyone in organisational life and it’s hurting people.  It’s overload.  It needs to be stopped.  Unfortunately…that’s now up to you!

The Fundamental Change

Where did this come from?  My hypothesis is…the mid-90s (note: ‘hypothesis’, which means a proposition to be investigated.  I’m sure there’s research).  It was about then that email got going, and from that moment on, assigning work got extremely easy.  Just email!

Here’s what I’d suggest the graph would look like if we could do stress and number of emails together:

Now, combine the increase in email with the societal values change that it’s now the responsibility of the receiver of the message to control the flow.   If you don’t like getting text messages at 6am, then it’s your problem to turn off the notifications.  Not the person sending it to think ‘maybe too early’. 

The issue is that turning off notifications is a lot easier than having a conversation with someone who has authority over your very employment – your manager.  It’s a scary moment to say “not possible”.

Which means we have a fork in the road.  We can either face the anxiousness of putting limits of work upfront. Or we can act like values haven’t changed and still expect it to be the sender’s problem to know how much we have on. 

Choose the second option…an anxiousness will become Anxiety.  Yes, with a capital ‘A’.

And…if you’re a manager…then make it easy for these conversations to happen.  Make it a genuine two-way street!

The Increasing Pressure

Organisations are social systems, and Barry Oshry shows us that social systems have standard roles.

Those with responsibility for whole show – Execs and Board, are trying to set strategy and navigate among increasing complexity.  Those producing the primary activities are doing their best to satisfy customer demand among increasing options and expectations.   The gap between these two groups will naturally widen if we don’t take deliberate action, and in that gap sits the group in the middle…often called ‘management’. 

All of this means that if those producing the primary activities aren’t saying “that’s not possible” and those setting strategy are saying “it has to be possible or the whole show is at risk”, the pressure builds and builds and builds.

And here we are!

And here’s what to do about it.

What To Do

These steps apply to all those working in organisations.  CEOs have demands from Boards or Elected Bodies, right through to the frontline.  If, however, you are in a managerial role, then you can sit with your people and go through exactly these steps.  It will immensely improve both your lives.

Step 1: Visualising The Work

Work needs to get out of our heads into something we can see.  It’s useful to break work up into these categories, with my fancy definitions.

• Initiatives – these are things that will end.  Projects are the common one.
• Operational – these are activities that won’t end.  Handling customers, requests etc.

For Operational work, the trick is to write down the areas of customer demand.  What are the common things that come at you, from which groups?  Break it up into some categories, then assign the amount of time each takes up.  The total is your operational time.

What’s left over is your Initiatives time (one of the acts of ‘management’ is the analysis of this to see what needs to change)

For Initiatives, write each thing that will end on its own card so we can see them all. 

With all Operational and Initiatives on the one sheet of A3 or whiteboard, we’ve now got the information we need to…

Step 2: Discuss Reality

This is a deep-breath conversation where we get together with those requesting the work and talk about what is and is not possible.  The deep breath is required because our sub-conscious is telling us that they don’t to hear it.  And maybe they don’t!  Facing reality is rough for everyone.  Which is why we need to look at the long-term consequences of not having this discussion.

Think builder-homeowner as your model for this conversation (more on that here), and the key is to move deeper into it by surfacing assumptions.  Like this:

“You think that it’s possible to get that done by the end of the month, what else are you seeing that I’ve got on at the same time”.

Or….

“I can tell what I’m asking for doesn’t seem realistic for you…I’m guessing there’s some other things you’re assuming need to be done too…let’s talk about them”.

The idea is to get underneath the conversation so you can build a picture of the reality that exists between you.   (Because that’s the only reality there actually is!)  It gets you onto the same side of the table, with reality being the third part of the triangle.

Step 3: Decide The Work

With angles and assumptions on the surface, we now need to decide what the actual work is going to be.   Stick to the next month, and agree

• Operational standards and some feedback loops so we can see how they’re going
• Which Initiatives are considered to be ‘next’, and where they can be by the end of the month
• The Initiatives that are temporarily frozen so they can stop floating around in our mind and bothering us.  They don’t disappear, and we might thaw them out next month, but, for now, get them out of here.  To see how this actually creates capacity, click here.

We’re not done yet though.  The fourth thing we need is the one we usually don’t worry about:

Step 4: Coordination

A very unfancy word is coordination, yet it’s the one that lets down most organisations.  It’s as simple as making sure that different activities don’t bang into each other as they go about it.  But simple doesn’t mean easy!

You’re going to find two things as soon as you increase altitude and look beyond your own bit;

• Many areas need the same resource
• Most areas assume their initiative should be next.

These are the two topics requiring discussion and sorting out if we want to avoid creating severe anxiety throughout our organisations.  Which means, if you’re a manager, ensure these discussions happen in a regular forum.   

And if you’re one of the people with initiatives, make sure you’re clear on who you need, and put in the effort to find out what else is going on and make sense of it (BTW, taking these actions is also an act of leadership….bonus!)

Deciding the work without coordinating is the equivalent to thinking a five-year old birthday party only requires invitations to be sent.  It won’t end well!

Making the Time To Do This

No magic methods here.  You’re going to have to spend a couple of hours over some consecutive evenings to do Step One.  Unless, of course, you can invert and go back through time,

It’s hard when you’re tired, which is why we need a reason to find the energy.  And that reason is…your own sanity. 

Remember, societal values now have responsibility with the receiver of the messages, so it’s up to you to make sense of your situation and get a handle on it.  This is rough, I know.  But there’s no point being a loyal soldier and saying ‘yes’ to everything so you can keep your job if it costs you your physical and mental health.   

Bringing it Home

Make the time to get your full workload visualised in terms of initiative and operations, then get clear on what is actually possible, and what you’d need to do it.  And now have a conversation about it.

Managers – sit with your people and do this exercise.  You’ll be amazed what you learn, and you’ll end up with a huge jump in productivity as people can relax and deliver what they actually can. 

And you’ll probably have to do the same thing with your own manager as you discover what really is possible.  And so on up the chain. 

Deep breath.

It’s time for action.  For your own sanity!