2 Thoughts - Overload & Capacity

Capacity Overload

I've been teaching behavioral analytics a lot in the past few weeks and I love the sessions - I usually get some deeper insight even as the trainer.  Last week we were talking about the trait that excels at prioritizing workload and one person (who wasn't super strong in that trait) said "I'm great at prioritizing.  I always get my stuff done."  The person across the table said, "You're great at getting it all done but you overload yourself and work 18 hour days to do it."  That was my aha - it's not about prioritizing.  It's about recognizing capacity and then making value calls on what work gets gone, done, or reduced so that you don't crush your people resources.  She then went on to say, "With my team, I have to explicitly tell them to lower the bar when we get overloaded, and then I have to hold them to that."

#1: How Many Hours?

How many hours are your team members working?  If it's consistently more than 8, you have a capacity problem.  

Or if they're staying in the bounds of the workday but you're consistently behind on project completion, you have a capacity problem.

#2: Let It Go

If you keep crushing your team, quality will suffer, mistakes will be made, and profits will fall.  Sometimes you need to refocus.  Sometimes you have to really dig in to where people are spending time and give them explicit instructions to do less.

#3: One Question to Ask Yourself

Where can you do less? What projects should get shuttered to regain momentum? (Or do you have the bandwidth to hire more support?  And if so - who on your maxed out team is going to lead that hiring and training initiative and how will you make space in their workload for it?)

Also - loving this little TedTalk "Move Fast and Fix Things"