The Circle of Life in Teams
As we learned in the Lion King, "there's more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done". The Lion King (2019) IMDb
The opening song in Disney's Lion King includes this line:
"There's more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done."
This is true for Simba and friends in the African savannah. It's also true for every single team and leader that I work with. Not once, ever, has a leader said to me that they didn't have enough to do or a team said that they are struggling with identifying what they could work on. The challenge is identifying what they should work on. I have no doubt that there are people and teams who are bored and don't have enough work to do - they aren't the ones I get to work with, though. If you're reading this, it's probably not you.
If we have more options than we can take on, choosing where we spend our energy, attention and time is a critical differentiator between productive teams who make progress on meaningful work and busy teams who are running at or above their capacity to deliver on promises that have been made. It boils down to two connected factors that most teams can improve on managing:
Choice - being able to select the highest value activities in your team's context, which often means being able to actively identify other actions not to do. We often don't make deliberate choices and end up reactive (not responsive) to other people's priorities.
Capacity - committing to work only once we have accurately factored in how much time, effort and attention a task takes and what we are able to dedicate to those tasks. Capacity is often our limiting factor.
When this goes wrong in teams it can feel like a vicious circle. We are busy, behind on meeting deadlines and demands are coming in faster than we can clear them. This means that we aren't able to get the visibility to decide on what is the best value, we deal with the most urgent work and push our efforts to (or beyond) sustainable limits. We know we can't keep it up, but we don't see a way out.
This way of working drains our teams.
When choice and capacity are working well in teams, we see the other side of the coin. Teams are able to identify the best pieces of work and set themselves up for doing a great job with adequate space (both calendar and cognitive). Teams deliver great work, surprise and delight stakeholders - all without burning themselves out. It takes a lot more discipline to commit to this way of working because it means saying no to pieces of work that aren't the best use of the team's capacity.
This way of working energises our teams.
Some questions for you to consider this week:
How well does your team choose the work that it commits to (and says no to)?
What would it take to give your team a little bit more capacity for its most meaningful work?