Escaping the ‘busy-busy’ syndrome

The effect of ‘others’ on our productivity

I was recently working in Singapore with a really competent manager who was experiencing a lot of work related stress. She had read my earlier blog on managing and the negative impact of being ‘busy being busy’ and asked if I could help her deal with her ‘busy-busy’ situation. I enquired about how she planned her day and it emerged that she had a good handle on what needed to be done to achieve her daily goals. She then listed activities that were the things that tended to interfere with, and deflect her from, getting on with what she believed needed to be achieved:
• Receiving a significant number of emails from colleagues that were for information only.
• Emails from her manager asking for more detail on an issue that her MD or other directors had an interested in.
• Additional unexpected tasks given to her by her manager
• Colleagues dropping into her office to ask for information or just to chat.
• Being requested to attend meetings that she did not consider necessary or relevant.
• Frequently called to attend impromptu meetings arranged by her manager at short notice.

During our conversation it became abundantly clear that she was someone who was committed to achieve her goals on time and to agreed standards. She tended to be regarded as a ‘high flyer’ in the organisation and had been given extended responsibilities over the past six months. Although being overloaded and overcommitted was not a new experience for her, the current situation left her feeling, for the first time, inadequate for the role. It was interesting to note that she had accepted responsibility for her current position as she tended to be reluctant to say no when asked for help. As she was such a dependable performer she was seen as a reliable ‘pair of hands’ in terms of making things happen and thus attracted more work from others. In fact it emerged that the perception was that high performers were frequently “rewarded” by being given more work.

Punishing the willing worker!!!

This was a situation of the willing worker apparently being given more than she could effectively cope with, yet she still appeared prepared to accept even more work from others. It was interesting to observe this happening during our conversation and I reflected on how many other competent people had been put in the same position by being too willing to help others. I have come in contact with very effective people who were nearly destroyed by overwork and this was often accepted as being OK by others. Yet in the same organisations there are people who had developed strategies that allowed them to operate with a comfortable easily managed workload.

This unfortunately appears to be a fairly common case of giving additional work to the ‘willing horse’, which often results in reduced overall effectiveness.

Finding Solutions

Returning to the Singapore case I invested a couple of hours getting her to list the activities that needed to be done on time, those that had more flexible timeframes, and finally those that could be delegated or done more effectively. The information only email issue was easily resolved by adding a few rules to her Outlook system to effectively manage the different emails received so she did not need to open them.

The emails and additional tasks from her manager were a bit more difficult to resolve as she had established an unrealistic expectation by the way she had quickly responded to his many requests. I suggested that she arrange a meeting with her manager to discuss workload issues to see if he appreciated the impact on her of his practice of allocating unexpected extra work. This should also help her to learn if he understood the effect of his actions on her performance and if not, to explain how his requests deflected her from accomplishing what he expected from her. The meeting could accomplish at least two important issues, firstly, recording that his actions were creating stress through her work being overloaded, and secondly, offering the opportunity for solutions to be found. Fortunately, for both people in this story they were able to work out a satisfactory process that enabled an acceptable working arrangement to be achieved.

We had also examined in detail each of the meetings she was expected to attend from how the purpose and expected outcomes related to her role and performance requirements. This resulted in her ability to reduce her time spent at meetings by up to 7 hours a week. Working well with her manager and needing less time to attend meetings actually enabled her to effectively engage with colleagues who needed to talk to her as she no longer considered them as interrupting her work routine.

The role of fear as a motivator?

Frequently, I am told that with job restructuring and downsizing, those people left in jobs are being expected to handle the additional work. Empirical evidence certainly supports this observation and I have no doubt that it contributes to the increasing level of work based stress and fatigue that many colleagues experience. However, I am equally not surprised at how readily people are prepared to accept this unreasonable level of overloading and when asked why the main response was “fear of losing their job”. The level of perceived fear has increased in organisations of different types over the past few years and does not look like abating soon. Yet, although I accept that their perception is their reality, when exploring the situation with the decision makers there were often no plans in place that included staff reductions or major changes.

The pressure of keeping a job in order to maintain an appropriate lifestyle, that may include the basic need of survival, is intense for many employees. This could explain why some really competent people work themselves to a point of increasing ineffectiveness due to stress and fatigue. The fact that sensible people at all ‘levels’ in both private/public organisations experience the overwork syndrome and appear to ‘accept’ the consequences of low productivity is a real worry for society in general.

The need for, and value, of ‘reframing’

I have expressed in earlier posts my concern at the ineffectiveness of most traditional hierarchical/bureaucratic organisations and that many of the people described above are ‘employed’ in them. There is an urgent need for a total rethink about how we can create organisations that actually operate using the considerable talent that exists within them. The focus on leadership and strategy has actually diverted attention from the essential practice of effective managing of organisations.

It was refreshing to read the ideas presented in Henry Mintzberg’s book with the title ‘Managing’ where he comments on the research he did studying 29 senior managers for a day each. The analysis and insights on the practice of managing would be valuable for all new and experienced managers. He noted that many people expected changes to happen to the command/control type organisations from the introduction of the following initiatives: “Theory Y”, “human relations”, “participative management”, “quality of work life”, “total quality management”, and “human resources”.

However, in Mintzberg’s view, the result of all the initiatives was that people in organisations remained “subordinates”. Even “participation” kept them subordinate, because this was seen as being granted at the behest of the manager who was still fully in control. And the latest term “empowerment” has not changed the sense of people being “subordinate” because the term itself indicates that the power remains with the manager.

Achieving results with people

I do not have a particular model of organisation in mind as a ‘silver bullet’ that would solve all the current problems. However, I am working on developing several models that will focus on practices that effectively engage everyone in an organisation in ways that truly empower them to achieve agreed results. This could be achieved by using self-managing processes with occasional support and guidance being provided by ‘enablers’ in the organisation when needed. Some of the other characteristics that are likely to be found in the models are:
• Collaborative working that diminishes the rigidity and ineffectiveness of functional silos.
• Open sharing of information across units designed to assist everyone focus on, and work towards, achievement of agreed goals.
• Everyone being explicitly clear on, and understand how, their work contributes to what needs to be achieved.
• Feedback on performance would be part of the ongoing daily sharing of information on the progress being made by the teams and individual team members.
• Learning would be central to the way everyone operated by the way the knowledge gained from the successes and failure was captured and shared

The overall aim would be to have everyone actively engaged in producing the results that customers and stakeholders expect because they want to and not because they need to be “managed”.

Achieving Results with ’self-managing’

I am saddened by how much time and energy is wasted time in traditional hierarchical organisations by processes and practices that are recognised by many to be ineffective “management”. I will explore my thoughts on self-managing in my next blog.

Tom

2.12.09