Focus on quality and accountability to stop employee burnout

Are you working too hard on the wrong things?

It’s a theme I’m hearing more and more in my conversations with leaders lately.

People are recognising their teams are too busy and workloads are becoming unsustainable. They know that this can’t continue, and that “doing more with less” simply isn’t an option, so they’re looking to work smarter, rather than harder.

In many of the organisations I’m speaking to leaders are saying that efforts need to be more focussed, that there needs to be more questioning around why things are done, and whether they really make that much difference to the end goal – whatever that is for the organisation.

I’m all for this approach and I’m wondering, now that we are clear of the COVID years, is this something we should all be doing a bit more of? Is this the time to stand back, take stock, evaluate our activity and make sure that the work we’re doing across the whole organisation is the right work?

In this issue of the Leadership Fix I want to talk a bit more about where to start with this, how to do it effectively and the dangers of getting it wrong.

How do I start stripping things back?

First, you need to understand WHY people are feeling the way they are and what’s happening inside the organisation that is creating a culture of busy but not productive. In the organisations that we work with we use our diagnostic framework The Field Model – which has three simple steps:

Understand. Diagnose. Fix.

Before you start deciding what to strip out or refocus your efforts on, you need to be sure you’re not just treating the symptoms and that you’re actually getting to the root cause. What is it that’s making it feel as though things are too busy and chaotic?

The Field Model is the framework we use to make sure organisations understand why they feel they’re doing too much, then we can hold a mirror up, diagnose and say ‘right, these are the things you need to stop doing’ and ‘this is the root cause of the issue’. Sometimes these are hard things to hear but we have to get a little bit uncomfortable to move forwards.

Carrying out an exercise like this right at the start of change helps to make sure everyone is aligned and that you’re all moving in the right direction. You can hear more in this podcast episode that explains The Field Model in more detail.

Re-focusing effectively

There are four main pillars that come into play when looking at your future direction and how to really focus in on doing less. It’s easy to say and much harder to do!

As a leadership team, if you are having this conversation as you review your strategy, these are the things you need to put in place to be able to make sure it works for the longer term:

Create accountability

There has to be someone in the room to make sure the end goal is always in sight. If there is now a focus on a certain number of aspects to achieve a clear goal, someone needs to be the person in the meetings to check that the activity agreed, the discussion being had etc. ?all links back to them.

This has to be done with intention and someone has to play this role in the conversations and meetings. Without them, it’s easy to get off track and into older habits. Agree who can do this and make sure it’s happening at the top of the organisation in executive and leadership meetings, as well as deeper into the organisations in functional team meetings.

Tip: Always have an agenda for meetings and in the minutes or notes, make sure there is the option to link back to the end goal or strategy. It can be a column in the template or just someone’s role to ask as the agenda item ends, before moving onto the next.

?

Focus on doing good work

If the pandemic has highlighted anything for office workers, it’s that we need to stop measuring productivity in hours at a screen and looking more at the impact and outcomes of the work. This means we need to look at quality over quantity. Churning out 20 reports that don’t achieve anything is less helpful than 2 reports that change the investment or direction for the organisation or team. ?

We can all spend time being busy and as this problem is now having serious consequences on health and wellbeing across the globe, it has to change. This must be led from the top with leaders making sure impact and outcomes are what is important, not presenteeism. ??

Tip: Avoid focussing on the hours people are working and start looking at the outputs. This will help you explore the development needs for the team as well and it shifts us into a space of more meaningful work.

?

Slowing down

I often ask leadership teams what the rush is; ‘Why is that the deadline for the project?’ or? ‘What is driving the date for that?’

More often than not, people struggle to articulate why the date is the date. We can create a false urgency in our work because we are conditioned to measure our effectiveness based on the volume of output.

Sometimes there is urgency. There is a need to put everything into a project and the hours are long and time invested is more than normal – but we have to set normal at a slower pace or burning out employees will get worse and worse.

Tip: make sure days aren’t packed with meetings and question what meetings are needed and what the outcome is for each, before you attend. Provide space for deeper work on projects and block this into times or days where you can focus without interruption. Make sure you know why the deadline is the deadline.

?

Know your purpose

This goes for the organisation as a whole and individual teams. In the recent communication audits we have carried out, the workshops with the teams at the end always start with creating the purpose of the communication function – and this needs to be done for every support function in organisations.

Being clear about why the team exists and what it needs to do to support the organisation means that managing stakeholder expectations is much easier for everyone and there is alignment in activity.

There is no one size fits all here as every function is different, operating in a different culture and to a different organisational objective.

If we don’t know why we are doing the work and what we are focussed on, we fall into the busy trap, delivering work and projects that have less impact and less meaning.

Tip: Review your organisational purpose and make sure it’s what it needs to be – and importantly, make sure you have clear actions to deliver it. Actions that are measurable! The purpose should have behaviours to support it that will help align everyone to this approach. Make sure teams are doing this too and that there is alignment through the organisation on what needs to happen, what needs to be the focus to achieve the goals.

Follow things through

The four pillars will ensure you are creating the right things to allow you to refocus effectively.

By seriously honing in on quality and accountability you will be able to stop employee burnout that is happening as a result of trying to do too much with too little.

The final point I want to make, when it comes to reassessing workloads and streamlining, is that leaders need to do what they say they will do. It's no use talking about refocusing without making sure that it’s followed through. This links to your ability to be a credible leader and your integrity – doing what you say you will do.

High-level words with no follow-up actions are a sure-fire way to dent your credibility. Make sure you know who is tracking this work across the organisation – let’s get intentional about the work we are doing!

?

Resources

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Slow Productivity – The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport (I’m currently listening to this)

All it Takes is a Goal by Jon Acuff

Have you done something similar in your organisation recently? What were the challenges? What would you recommend to others looking to do similar? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below.