Why you’re doing too much…

Are you doing too much? I don’t mean that in the sense of an overloaded to-do list, multi-tasking in an attempt to get everything done at once and in reality achieving little to nothing. What I’m talking about is the number of projects your organisation is working on at one time.

It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially when you’re trying to grow a business. More clients means you’re growing, right? Wrong. Research shows that when you’re working on too many projects concurrently, you’re spreading yourself too thinly. As a leader, it falls to you to be aware of the negative effects this can have on your organisation and your workforce.

Firstly – quality. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see a correlation between an overload of work and a drop in the quality of your output.?

You also need to think of the physical and mental toll running too many projects will have on your team. You run the risk of unnecessarily high stress levels, burnout, exhaustion… especially if there’s no let up across the year. In a time when the Great Resignation is front and centre of every leader’s attention, are you mindful enough your team’s state of mind?

The Harvard Business Review identifies* seven reasons for overload:

-???????Impact blindness: leaders are unaware of the pressures being placed on their teams to deliver too many projects at the same time.

-???????Multiplier effects: a lack of visibility into other teams means that initiatives/projects are undertaken without due consideration given to the impact each project will have on the workforce.

-???????‘Political logrolling’: if a leader is has a personal investment in a particular project, they may keep them alive outside of the usual pathways. “In the world of legislative politics, this is known as logrolling, a term reportedly coined in 1835 by U.S. Congressman Davy Crockett as a metaphor derived from the old custom of neighbors’ assisting one another with the moving of logs. In organizations it leads to a pileup of promises to fulfill—and projects that just won’t die.” (HBR)

-???????Unfunded mandates: projects launched by executives without the necessary resources, meaning teams then struggle to deliver.

-???????Band-Aid initiatives: ?starting a new project as a metaphorical sticking plaster for a larger problem.

-???????Cost myopia: if, in an effort to save money, you cut your people, but not the amount of work they’re doing… what do you think the result is going to be?

-???????Initiative inertia: this is such a common one. It’s effectively projects or initiatives that should have been retired many moons ago, but have become habit. As members of the Catalyst Programme will know, I’m always encouraging people to focus on what they can do less of!

So what’s the answer? The sweet spot for most organisations is between 3 – 5 core projects at any one time. If you’re working on more than that at any one time, think of the ‘spinning too many plates’ analogy. Some of those plates are plastic and won’t break if they fall, but what if you’re using Nan’s best china? Can you afford to take that risk? ?

*https://hbr.org/2018/09/too-many-projects