Operation Director Curtis* had this problem when he was on one of my leadership programmes. It’s a common one, so I’m featuring it in this month’s article. Let me know if you’d have handled it differently.
Ellie, who was only a couple of years out of university, used to be an ambitious ball of energy. She was a superstar in the team and had a reputation for getting things done.
In the last few months, her productivity had tailed off. She met her deadlines, but Curtis sensed that her work was rushed and only just good enough. He suspected that her heart wasn’t in it anymore, maybe she was looking for another job? Ellie worked mostly from home, so it was hard to judge what she did all day. She seemed responsive to messages and emails and showed up promptly, camera on, at meetings. It was what she did the rest of the time that was the problem.
In 1955 the British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote a great opening line for an essay in The Economist: ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.’ He was complaining about the inefficiencies of the British Civil Service and used the example of an elderly lady writing a postcard to her niece. She had nothing else to do in her time, so this simple task took up an entire day.
Could Parkinson’s Law explain what was going on with Ellie? Was she just stretching out her tasks to fill the day and putting in minimum effort? Did she need more tasks, more deadlines, more challenging work? Sometimes when performance has tailed off people need an interesting side-project to get their motivation back. Should Curtis lean on her a bit more?
Hold your horses. The obvious answer to any people problem is usually the wrong one. Remember that not so long ago Ellie was an ambitious and keen to please high performer.
Curtis met up with Ellie and asked her what was on her plate. Gentle probing showed that she was a victim of her own success. She did such a great job that she was now contributing more than her fair share for her team. She was also involved in other cross-team projects that Curtis didn’t know about; other managers had sneakily gone directly to her. She hadn’t wanted to flag up with him how much work she had to do, but there weren’t enough hours in her week to fit it in. Sometimes she didn’t know where to start, so she’d end up triaging emails.
Curtis worked with Ellie to help her prioritise and feel more in control.
When people wanted her to do something she asked:
What’s the latest you need it by? This helped her better manage her diary; see how to PIMP your calendar in The Crazy Busy Cure.
And best of all, she pushed back. Most work deadlines are arbitrary and it’s much easier than you might think to sequence tasks, rather than have them all dropping on you at once. I can do it when I’ve got this planning signed off, so I can start it by next Tuesday, is that ok?
Reframing
Curtis coached Ellie on her core beliefs, replacing the high pressure demands she put on herself with more realistic, kinder beliefs.
What are you demanding of yourself? What are you telling yourself?
I’m sure you’ve already worked out that she put pressure on herself to be a high achiever and to keep everyone happy.
He helped her reframe this to be kinder to herself:
Is it possible to please everyone all the time?
Is it realistic to always work harder than everyone else?
What’s better – to work smart, or work hard?
Curtis gets a grip
Even the most efficient of us can hit a wall with too much to do. This was a wakeup call for Curtis. I was teaching him to coach and build accountability in his team, but he couldn’t start this until everyone was operating effectively, with the right skills in the right role.
I asked him why Ellie hadn’t come to him for help and how he’d let the problem get this far. Up to now he’d just asked people how they were and took their ‘fine thanks‘ answer at face value; he was busy too.
He realised that he had been guilty of letting Ellie get on with things because he didn’t want to be seen as a micro-manager. He had become too hands-off and wasn’t aware of who did what.
His team needed him to get more involved in the granular details of what everyone did all day. It emerged that at least another team member had been stressed with their workload, whilst a couple weren’t pulling their weight.
Curtis needed to get a firm grip of managing the team’s workflow. That’s not micro-management; that’s part of his job. Managers have an ethical responsibility to make sure that people’s tasks fit the time available to do them – i.e. the hours they are paid to work. As you well know, home working and 24/7 communication have pushed the boundaries between work time and personal time, so people end up cannibalising their own time to squeeze everything in.
Busy work and long hours are an obstacle to productivity. Curtis had to get on top of this.
He introduced an old-school daily kick-off meeting, when everyone talked through their priorities and exactly when they’d make time for them.
He spoke to his peers in the organisation to find out why his people were being pulled into other projects. This can be a useful career opportunity, providing access to new networks and knowledge.
Other times it’s just extra work covering up for staff shortages and ends up with casualties like Ellie who end up doing too much. Successful people are much better at saying no when they can’t see personal benefit in getting involved in curveballs. They are less worried about upsetting people and don’t feel responsible for everyone else’s problems.
He also introduced firm communication boundaries, banning out of hours emails and messaging unless genuinely necessary and cutting back on internal meeting times.