Productivity, Headspace and Making Work Visible
Summary When collaborating or working in a team, making our work visible could be the key component for increased productivity, clarity and reduced stress.
Julia is a middle manager at a large advertising agency. She’s been drafted in as an emergency replacement for a colleague on a high-profile project. She’s agreed to take on two accounts focused on her specialist niche.
Over the ensuing weeks Julia finds herself taking on more accounts, each of which have their own reporting streams and executives. What results is a period of heightened stress, overwhelm and a feeling of treading water. She can’t quite figure out how she’s ended up with so much on her plate. She knows that she needs to have the frank and open discussions to reevaluate responsibilities and accountabilities – a task she doesn’t relish.
So, she puts this off until it’s just too uncomfortable to bear.
Julia is a fictional character and although her story is anecdotal, it represents a common scenario in many corporate environments. Well meaning ambitious team players take on new roles and projects that quickly morph into something larger and unexpected.
Invisible Overload
The root cause of overload can be complex and dependent on a number of variables. But a common theme is that once people are in a state of overload, they often wait longer than is healthy to address the issue. This could be because of a number of reasons. For one, as humans, we’re social creatures and as such are conditioned to want to help and demonstrate utility, even if it is to our detriment on occasion. We let requests for help pile up, even if they aren’t down to us to resolve. Or we don’t clarify and re-assess accountabilities and expectations, even if they are beyond what we’ve agreed to. The harsh nature of the situation is that individual requests, tributary tasks and imposed accountabilities are visible to requesters but the full impact of the sum of the constituent parts is sadly only felt by those on the receiving end.
In simple terms – nobody sees the workload on the individual except that individual themselves. What results is a scenario of multiple spinning plates or worse – a sense of chronic overwhelm and existential overhead1.
Projects & Boundaries
Many of us have experienced how difficult it can be to set and maintain boundaries at work. We work longer hours to the detriment of our health and relationships, often to overcome what we foresee to be a temporary and short term “sprint”. Those of us who do manage to set hard boundaries between work and personal life face the challenge of condensing increasing workload within work hours - we make family time a priority, but we still have more to do in less time, or worse – we’re physically present with our families but not mentally there. Multiple projects need driving and often their associated communication streams become projects in and of themselves instead of vehicles of support.
Visibility – The Vehicle For Managing Workload & Priorities
One solution is to make our work visible. In plain terms, making our team members and those we report to clear on what it is that we’re working on over a period, and at a given time. This isn’t to remove autonomy from our work, but on the contrary, to give us more breathing space and autonomy to carry out the critical work that’s best aligned with our personal and organizational goals.
When our work is visible to the key people who we interact with, there’s increased clarity and ownership of tasks and outcomes. There’s a tangible method of balancing workload within teams. This increases individual and organizational productivity and as a result individual self-efficacy. Teams as a whole perform better.
Within the smaller teams I’ve worked, I’ve found the approach of making work visible to return multiple benefits.
A. Accountabilities and next actions are defined, freeing up mental space to work on the task at hand.
B. Personal tasks are prioritized in line with the team’s weekly goals which are in turn aligned with the larger function’s goals.
C. The balance of workload for each individual is clearly visible, allowing adjustments to be made to suit. This limits the likelihood of overload and burnout.
D. There’s greater clarity on the likelihood of reaching success within the relevant timescales.
E. New requests emerging for the individual throughout the week are evaluated against the team and organizational priorities set at the start of each week. This allows informed boundaries to be maintained or adjustments to be made within the context of the team’s deliverables as a whole.
F. Email communication between the team is reduced (albeit not completely eradicated) and replaced by specific focused workshops and end of day updates. This allows teams to spend more time carrying out work instead of managing an ongoing stream of email communication damaging to focused work.
The mechanics of how the above can be implemented warrants its own discussion and there’s plenty of evidence out there of how tools like Trello, Asana and more have improved workflow and productivity for many teams. I’ve found that even a simple low tech excel spreadsheet has benefits and can be tweaked to suit your team’s specific type of work (example below). The key is clarity on projects, tasks and accountabilities.
Typical Weekly Trello Board
Headspace through visibility
But it’s the more intangible mental benefits that I’ve found to be most valuable. I’ve found that when we know what we’re working on as a team, there’s a sense of trust and comradery. There’s a greater sense of consciousness with every request made and received. There’s a greater sense of control over the task at hand and therefore overall self-efficacy within teams – when actions are clear and planned in advance, fewer fires break out and work is completed with a sense of accomplishment rather than pain relief.
Whilst many of the ideas above are anecdotal – I suspect that there may already be studies around the topic of self-efficacy and making our work visible in this way. For now this has become an integral tool in my workflow. The result has been an elevated sense of control, productivity and most importantly, calm and stillness as I navigate my days.
References
1. Existential Overhead: Work we have yet to complete, or any aspect of our life that distracts us , creates existential overhead.
Book – Personal Kanban by Jim Benson, Tonianne DeMaria Barry https://www.amazon.co.uk/Personal-Kanban-Mapping-Work-Navigating/dp/1453802266/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22WF6W1FM2AVD&dchild=1&keywords=personal+kanban+mapping+work+navigating+life&qid=1634469624&qsid=258-1757191-2284252&sprefix=personal+kanba%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1&sres=1453802266%2C1791953042%2C0319244571%2C1671324080%2C0319246914%2C1458400263%2C1539873617%2C1629142123%2CB093975P8G%2C0319467953%2CB01LP72D3I%2CB00DHINR02%2CB000QCOF62%2C1553193946%2C1573104108%2C1413002374&srpt=ABIS_BOOK
See also, “Open Loop”: Anything that does not belong where it is, the way it is, is an ‘open loop,” which will be pulling for your attention if it’s not appropriately managed.
Book – Getting Things Done by David Allen
