Last year, I started exploring how we can simplify our work to improve both corporate performance and employees’ wellbeing.
I believe we need to start by identifying and being honest about our ‘corporate clutter’, which are the things that are keeping us busy but not necessarily helping us achieve the organisation’s mission.
In today’s post I go into some of the causes of this excessive busyness and how they can negatively impact both the organisation and its employees.
I hope that you find them helpful in your respective leadership roles.
1. Lack of clarity and focus
In extreme cases, this means that the organisation is operating without a plan or a clear direction.
However, these days most organisations are good at ensuring that 3- to 5-year strategic plans are in place and many take care to review them on an annual basis. The really fancy ones even track their performance against them.
But sometimes the content of these plans is too vague or too aspirational and it’s unclear how it should unfold in real life. This makes it difficult for employees to understand what this means for them, how they fit into the picture and what their work priorities should be.
2. Lack of discipline
This is applicable to organisations that do establish a strategic plan and a way forward…and then are guilty of ‘shiny object syndrome’. They keep going off into different directions, taking on the next new shiny initiative without testing it against their current plan.
It’s fine to be flexible and not stick fully to a plan, but not so much that your 3-year plan becomes obsolete before the first year is out. If the leaders don’t take it seriously, the rest of the organisation won’t either.
3. Over-commitment
This one is often the result of the previous two issues.
Organisations become over-committed when they want to do ‘all the things’, solve ‘all the problems’, provide ‘all the services’. This just isn’t possible in a world of limited resources.
Even if you increase the amount of resources at your disposal, there is only so much the leadership group can focus on and track…because at the end of the day, it all escalates up to them, where the real accountability lies.
Isn’t it better to focus on a smaller number of things that will add real value to the world?
It also makes it easier for employees to understand the organisation’s purpose and priorities.
4. Inflexibility
This can be out of fear, when organisations stick to legacy practices because it seems easier than initiating change.
This can also be a result of organisational stubbornness, when organisations stick to initiatives that are not really working but ones they’re too invested in.
This is a tough one, I know. Dealing with this is easier said than done.
However, it’s still something to be mindful of and worth addressing through cultural change, planning and performance tracking processes.
5. Excessive oversight
Oversight is necessary but it needs to be risk-based and not unnecessarily adding to employees’ workloads or diminishing the level of trust in a team.
In particular, we should be careful not to add more layers of oversight to compensate for our lack of focus on building employees’ capability, confidence and independence.
Any thoughts?
Have you encountered any of the issues above? If yes, how have you dealt with them? Do you know of any other causes of excessive busyness? Contact me and share your thoughts.
Thanks for taking the time to read the post.