Lead Smart

PART IIIYOUR TEAM

Enhanced productivity radiates outwards from you as a leader, through your direct reports and on to their wider teams. If you put the right strategies in place, you and your direct reports can greatly impact the productivity of your whole team. I have no doubt that your wider team will be extremely busy and will be feeling the pressure, just like you. This busyness may feel to them like they have too much work to do, and not enough capacity to get it all done.

I recently overheard a conversation between a team leader and the HR person who supported the team. They were discussing a pulse survey conducted across the team in question. One of the comments from the HR person caught my attention: ‘A common theme coming through from all the respondents was that there is too much work for them to do. They feel overloaded all the time. We need to take this seriously and address this issue.’

‘Too much work’ and ‘not enough resources’ are phrases I hear a lot from workshop participants and clients. And sometimes, teams are asked to do too much, with too few resources to manage all the work. But to jump straight to the conclusion that there is too much work is a mistake in my view. In fact, before we ask, ‘Is there too much work?’ I believe we should ask two other, more useful questions related to what I call capacity erosion. Is there too much:

• internal erosion of our team's capacity?
• external erosion of our team's capacity?

Capacity erosion refers to the idea that ...