Conquering Burnout or How We Reduced Burnout on our Teams From 34% to 16%?

Recently, my teams and I were able to reduce burnout rates from 34% to 16%. Today, we want to share our approach with you in case it helps with your teams.?

We’ve all come across leaders who inspire us to find balance in our lives. The day after I was promoted to an executive I found myself walking into our building at the same time as our company’s President, Mike Wassmer.?

We’d known each other for many years. He congratulated me on my promotion. At some point during our conversation, he said: “You know, Oz, when I was a senior associate at the company I worked from 8am to 6pm. And now that I’m the President of the business I work from 8am to 6pm. I stay focused on the most important things at work and at home.”

These few words have had a strong impact on my life and my career. I’ve stayed true to them. I focus on the highest leverage 3-5 initiatives at work, and I always log off in time to go to the gym, make it home in time for dinner, and my children’s activities. I take family birthdays and anniversaries off no matter what’s on the docket at work. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.

I wish I could say that my ability to maintain a work life balance is because of my own self discipline; however, that is just not true. Instead, my teams and I have found that the ability to maintain any values is rooted in our ability to embed these values into a set of norms and repeatable systems, so that people on our teams don't have to make tough choices. We’ve listed our norms and systems below.?

Setting Team Norms: When I join a team I always ask if we want to create norms that will help us maintain work life balance, norms that give all of us personal space during off hours, whether that’s evenings, on weekends or during vacations. Everyone on the team usually agrees unanimously.?

In concept it’s easy to agree that “we want work life balance.” It's easy to agree (and the kind thing to do) to not disturb each other on our time off. Yet we know it's hard to live by on a day to day basis, especially when it’s time to send that email, empty that inbox, or reply to that message that comes at night or on the weekend. We all know what happens when the boss sends an email during off hours while we’re playing with our kids, or on a walk with our spouse. We get distracted, even if they don’t expect us to respond. We might even stop what we’re doing. We might even reply to the message. We lose the moment with our family.

This is why we believe it's important to work together as a team on a set of shared norms, and then to live by them. Recently, our teams created a set of norms that goes as follows (please feel free to use the infographics below for your teams if you want to do so):

We debated about other items e.g. marketing and project deadlines, and decided that we should manage those appropriately and with discipline to prevent off-hour check-ins.?

Once we created our norms we moved to the next step - creating a management system that helps us stay true to our norms (please feel free to share the infographic below with your teams if you want to do so):

The system above ensures that leadership is eyes on and hands off, and that problems are solved systematically, deliberately, and in the moment. Fire-drills seldom come up within such a system because we get to connect daily.?

Staying True to One’s Norms and Management System:?

The same weekend we created our norms and systems, I got a group text message on the weekend about “information ‘leaking’ regarding a future organizational change.” The text was sent to all directors. I read the text, and then the many replies to it. I then reminded myself of our norms, and of our exceptions. The text chain did not meet the “exception rules” we’d established regarding regulators, audits, and safety.?

It took every bone in my body to not reply to the chain. I wanted to say “We shouldn’t be messaging each other on the weekend because it doesn’t fit our norms,” but then I’d be breaking one of our norms, which is “During off-hours, on the weekends, or on vacation we will not respond to messages.”

So I waited until Monday’s stand-up, and then told the team that while the message chain was important, it was also unnecessary on the weekend.?

It was the last text chain I’ve received on a weekend for over a year.?

Why Did Me Not Replying to the Text Chain Matter? Once a leader makes a commitment, a clock starts in the team’s head that measures the distance between the leader's words and the leader's actions. To gain credibility the time for the words to match the actions needs to be short. Mine was 3 days.?

Have exceptions come up? Yes, only twice this year. Once, we had a regulatory meeting request that landed at 3am Manila time (which is 3pm US time). I logged on, met with our regulators, and afterward logged off and went to bed.?

The second time, we had a regulatory request with a 24 hour turnaround time that required me to connect with someone during vacation time.?

Why does this all matter? There is no shortage of studies that reminds us of the importance of rest, whether it's hours at work or hours in the gym. Our minds and bodies need rest, for us to stay strong and focused. And when we’re healthy and rested we are the best versions of ourselves: we bring our freshest ideas and positive energy into our personal and professional lives.?

After we instituted the practices above, it took a few months to live them, and another few months to see our burnout rates reduced from 34% to 16%.?

At a more philosophical level, we all understand that our time is finite, whether it's with friends, family, siblings, pets, children. Time passes and is irreplaceable.?

I’ve had team members tell me that they feel the need to stay connected at work while they’re on vacation because they don’t want to miss out on anything. I remind them that they’re missing out on their vacation, on precious moments with friends and families. They’ll likely get to talk about the project at work after vacation, but they’re never getting that vacation, that moment with their children, family, friends or pets back again.?

I remind them that even though I work at an incredible company that takes care of me and helps me find work life balance, if something happened to me, I’ll likely be replaced in a matter of 6-8 weeks. Yet, my company will not be able to send a replacement son for my mother, father for my children, friend for my dog, spouse for my wife.?

So let’s take care of ourselves, because someone is waiting with bated breath for you to log-off and come be with them, talk to them, play with them, break bread with them, or just go on walk.?

#irreplaceable #ichoosecapitalone #time #worklifebalance #balance #rest