<\/p>\n
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to\u00a0HBR \u041e \u043b\u0438\u0434\u0435\u0440\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435<\/em>. I\u2019m HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard. On this show, we share case studies and conversations with the world\u2019s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. We carefully curate this feed from across the HBR portfolio, aiming to help you unlock your next level of leadership.<\/p>\n I hope you enjoy the episode.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I\u2019m Sarah Green Carmichael.<\/p>\n Launching a new initiative is one way a manager can make their mark in a new job \u2013 or show their value at a company they\u2019ve been at for years.<\/p>\n So it makes sense that more and more managers across industries might be piling on more and more new projects.<\/p>\n The downside, though, is that more and more work gets saddled on middle managers and frontline employees. Workers are getting overwhelmed.<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: When you have large organizations and lots of different people wanting to make things happen, the ripple effect all the way down is where it simply becomes almost impossible to keep up. And with all good intentions \u2013 people want to support these initiatives, they are great ideas \u2013 there are simply too many to be able to support to the right level.<\/p>\n That\u2019s Rose Hollister. She and Michael Watkins looked at how companies \u2013 like a Fortune 500 retailer \u2013 ultimately suffer from overloading their employees like this.<\/p>\n They are the co-authors of the HBR article \u201cToo Many Projects,\u201d and both consultants at Genesis Advisers. Rose and Michael, thanks for joining us today.<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Great to be here.<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: Thank you, happy to be here.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So has initiative overload always been a problem or are initiatives more popular now?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: We think that initiative overload is becoming more of a problem. We think it\u2019s been a problem, but we think it\u2019s escalating, and we think it\u2019s escalating for a few reasons. One, organizations over the last five to 10 years have gotten leaner and so they cut costs. Usually one of the main ways to do that is by cutting headcount. And then usually what doesn\u2019t happen is that they don\u2019t change the work or cut the work to fit the cut in people.<\/p>\n The other thing is that if you think about it, year after year, a department or a function wants to do something better; they want to launch something; so they start something new this year, something else next year and the following year and large departments might launch many initiatives and that happens over an entire organization. And then there are legacy initiatives that have been in place for a long time that maybe should be stopped but haven\u2019t been.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Is this just kind of like every executive has to have his initiatives that he\u2019s running or she\u2019s running?<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: This is a part of the problem and it\u2019s not uncommon. A leader only has a couple of years in a role. They want to make a mark. One way to make a mark as to launch a signature initiative, right? And this is also a great example of what we call the \u201cmagnifier effect,\u201d right, which is you may have executives, you know, individually launching a few initiatives, but then there\u2019s some critical level at the organization \u2013 in this case, the store managers, where it all comes to a focal point and people literally get burned out by everything that\u2019s kind of coming down towards them.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: It\u2019s interesting because there are like, you know, mathematical equations that support that too, right? It\u2019s like, if you look at a road, traffic\u2019s flowing smoothly and then all of a sudden you just get a couple more cars on that road and the road can bear you have a traffic jam.<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Exactly.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Sounds like the same thing.<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Very similar, but I think also just understand that those executives that you mentioned earlier that are launching those signature initiatives \u2013 that\u2019s happening in all the departments. And they\u2019re all trickling down, but where implementation needs to happen often is at focal points where, you know, it all kind of comes together. And so a couple of initiatives from each department can translate into a dozen right at the level of something like the store manager.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So I just want to ask why simple sort of prioritizing techniques don\u2019t seem to work here, because this is something where I know in my own career when I\u2019ve felt overwhelmed, my boss said, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t expect you to keep every ball in the air, just the most important ones. And some things will drop and that\u2019s fine. And these are your priorities. And just do them.\u201d Why doesn\u2019t that kind of conversation help?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: I think the problem is, as Michael said, there are so many different functions or departments all with signature important initiatives. So if marketing has their initiatives for the year, if IT has theirs, if HR has theirs, if operations has theirs \u2013 and I could go on and on. In big organizations they might be doing multiple big initiatives. Well, they usually prioritize in silos and they say, \u201cWe\u2019re going to do these five or these 10 or these 20.\u201d Well, that happens in every single function and what usually does not happen, is a senior leadership team saying, \u201cLet\u2019s look at all of these. Let\u2019s look across the enterprise.\u201d What Michael and I would call a balcony view. Let\u2019s get on the balcony. Let\u2019s look. Let\u2019s not just look at the dollars this will take. Let\u2019s look at what the hours it will take for people to either learn this, support this, execute on this, sustain this.<\/p>\n That kind of inventory usually is not done. And somebody can juggle, but there are so many things coming at them that prioritizing isn\u2019t enough at the team leader or employee level. That prioritizing has to happen, should be happening at the senior team level.<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: I love your example because you had a boss and you had a reasonable boss. And I want you to imagine you had three bosses, none of whom were reasonable, all shooting things at you \u2013 maybe with conflicting priorities. All asserting that it\u2019s really important that you do this work today.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Oh, that sounds like a nightmare!<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Right, and that\u2019s what really does it. It\u2019s both the number of channels that things are coming out people through, combined with a really a lack of attentiveness to what people reasonably can accomplish.<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: Well, and just to build on what Michael said, that \u201creasonably accomplish\u201d \u2013 depending on the culture, it might not be culturally okay to say we\u2019re at our limits. And people fear saying I can\u2019t do more or they\u2019ve tried it and they haven\u2019t gotten heard. And so I think there\u2019s also a, \u201cWe can do this, let\u2019s work harder, not more!\u201d And well that only works when there\u2019s a reasonable amount of things on the plate.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So if senior executives are somewhat clueless to the havoc that they\u2019re wreaking and people are either afraid to speak up or aren\u2019t heard, then how do companies know if they\u2019re creating this problem?<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: I think that\u2019s a really big problem, which is often they don\u2019t, right? This is something we call \u201cimpact blindness,\u201d that basically senior management does not have sufficient visibility into the cumulative impact that the executive team is having on people at lower levels. Maybe they\u2019re not paying attention, maybe they don\u2019t want to pay attention, maybe they\u2019ve got their own agendas they\u2019re pursuing, but the net impact is they do not really have visibility into what they\u2019re doing to the organization. And the organization will survive doing this for a while, and then the cracks will begin to start showing.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: When those cracks start to show, what do they look like? Is it decreased engagement? Is it turnover? What is it?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: It\u2019s decreased engagement. It\u2019s turnover. It\u2019s people leaving for other jobs. There was an SVP that we were in an interview with and he was a leader at a human resource consulting firm and he said, \u201cI love this organization. I love the work. I love the team. The pace is unsustainable. If I stay here, I will have a heart attack.\u201d And he left and he found another role.<\/p>\n I was just talking to one of my clients and they had gotten in their engagement survey, they had gotten scores about that work-life balance wasn\u2019t where they wanted it to be. And as they unpacked that and said why \u2013 it wasn\u2019t that managers weren\u2019t flexible and weren\u2019t saying, \u201cYes, take care of your home life, your children,\u201d those things. It was that there were simply too many initiatives going on for people to be able to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: I would add that this sort of thing can work okay when unemployment is high, right? And people are worried about their jobs and they\u2019re worried about saying things. But when you start to get to a full employment situation and people have lots of opportunities, the real risk is you\u2019re going to lose your best talent.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: And is that because the good people have more options or because the good people are the ones who tend to be the most overloaded with a million initiatives?<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Yes, to both. Right? I think it\u2019s both things. One is that they tend to bear the brunt, right \u2013 your high performer, you know, tends to get more loaded on them, right, which of course can generate some resentment because other players are not doing the job and they have options. And so they look for places that are going to appreciate them and modulate the workload better than where they are.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: How do companies usually try to solve this problem and does that work?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: Well, typically, first of all, they say \u201cBy function, let\u2019s go prioritize.\u201d And so the marketing department says, \u201cOkay, here\u2019s what\u2019s top for us, here\u2019s what we\u2019re doing, let us lead on our initiatives,\u201d and that happens across every other function \u2013 whether that\u2019s finance, whether that\u2019s IT. That typically doesn\u2019t work because there\u2019s not an understanding of the impact.<\/p>\n Now there was someone that we know that looked at his organization and realized this was an issue and he asked every senior leader of this organization \u2013 the C-suite \u2013 to come to a three day meeting and as their homework, they had to bring every initiative that was happening under their oversight: What was the business case for it? What was it taking in people time? And then how did it meet two screens \u2013 one, to support the building of the business, the growth of the business, and second to support customer satisfaction?<\/p>\n Now that C-suite took three days, they looked at every single initiative, and as a group they said, \u201cWe won\u2019t do this, we won\u2019t do this, we won\u2019t do this.\u201d Then they reallocated resources from the things that they weren\u2019t doing to the key initiatives. But at the end of the day, they significantly decreased the number of initiatives across the enterprise. When someone does that, the whole organization wins and the business results gave proof to this because looking down the road, customer service scores did go up, the business did grow and people looked back on that three day retreat as a turning point in the organization.<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah. I would add a couple things to that, too. That\u2019s potentially a highly conflictual process. Right? That\u2019s a really difficult process of making tradeoffs between people that really want to drive certain things in their organizations. Second thing is you\u2019ve got to be very careful about interdependencies between things, right? You can stop this and it turns out it really impacts that \u2013 and so you\u2019ve got to be willing to think through those interdependencies. And then, you know, once you\u2019ve decided to kill something, you actually have to kill it. I mean we see these Zombie initiatives, right, that they sort of rise from the dead because they\u2019ve got an agenda associated with them and people find little hidden pockets of resource or think they do to try and pursue them.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So usually when projects don\u2019t die or stay dead, leaders get blamed by employees and employees who feel kind of disgruntled and kind of like, \u201cUgh, like, you know, management never kills any these projects,\u201d but I know that from talking to leaders, leaders feel like employees won\u2019t stop doing the work. I mean \u2013 it\u2019s sort of each side kind of blames the other camp.<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah. I\u2019ve been doing some work with a big pharma company \u2013 R&D. And I think I\u2019ve seen this very much happened because people get very identified with projects, right? They begin to think their employment may depend on certain projects being pursued or they really strongly believe that this particular drug is going to change the world. And so there\u2019s resistance to this notion that we\u2019re actually going to kill something. Prioritization \u2013 really prioritizing and really making it stick \u2013 that\u2019s really hard.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So as a leader, how can you deliver that message convincingly and compassionately?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: I think part of this, and one of the things that we find is there needs to be better dialogue going both ways. There needs to be an understanding from the people who are being asked to execute on this initiative, what\u2019s the true impact? Or if we\u2019re stopping it, are there pieces of this that are related somewhere else? Because in big organizations, as Michael said, there are so many interdependencies that stopping something \u2013 maybe you can stop 85 percent, but maybe another department is depending on this 15 percent. And so part of this is more robust conversations about what will it mean to stop? What\u2019s the impact on the organization? If we stop and what\u2019s the plan to stop it?<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: You need to recognize that really doing this kind of privatization and winnowing across an organization is a kind of change management exercise. And change management exercises tend to work best when you start with the why: Why are we doing this? What are the benefits, right? Rather than just jumping straight to the \u201cwhat\u201d or the \u201chow\u201d?<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So clearly it would be better to prevent this problem from occurring. What are some of the questions that leaders should be asking before launching initiatives to avoid this kind of thing?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: I think the example for me would be if I just say \u201cI\u2019m going to buy a car\u201d and I budgeted for my car. Well I go and buy that car, but if I can\u2019t afford the gas, if I can\u2019t afford the maintenance and the insurance, I can\u2019t really afford the car. Well, I think for a lot of initiatives we get the initial funding, but we don\u2019t understand all the peripheral things that are needed in order to support it for the long-term. So it\u2019s understanding will this initiative truly solve the problem? Did we do enough homework to understand whether this isn\u2019t just a Band-aid but it\u2019s actually the right answer, and then if it is the right answer, have we truly looked at the costs, and does it make sense \u2013 with all the other things in the organization \u2013 is this truly one of the priorities? One of the quotes we really like is from Steve Jobs that says that we all need to get better at saying \u201cno\u201d to hundreds of really good ideas.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What about the sort of \u2013 I think of it as the closet cleaning approach, where for every new piece of clothing you buy you have to donate an old piece of clothing or give it away. I mean, can you take the same approach with initiatives or is that just too rigid?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: It might be like, let\u2019s say that I buy a wool coat, but I give away a pair of socks. So they\u2019re not quite equal. So I think that where it\u2019s a nice idea to add an initiative, take one away. I think it\u2019s about how, what will it take for the organization to support this initiative?<\/p>\n I used to, when I was running the team at Mcdonald\u2019s, I used to ask my team about once a quarter: \u201cWhat are we doing that we could stop doing and no one would notice?\u201d We also one year took the time to say for everything that we\u2019re delivering, what does it take in time to deliver it? And we got a really amazing sense of if we were doing a high potential officer program, what did it take us in hours to support that. And we did that across every single program we ran.<\/p>\n And then when we sat down to plan for the following year, I had all these great ideas. I wanted to start this. I wanted to start this. I wanted to do this. And my team who had been working with me tracking it said \u201cWe have 15 percent free time. That\u2019s all. So if you want to start these things, are we going to get other resources? Are we going to stop doing some other things?\u201d We had done our homework to truly know what it took to deliver. Most times we\u2019re all just working so hard, we don\u2019t really know what it takes to make something happen.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: If you\u2019re talking to people at the C-suite level, what\u2019s sort of the most important thing you\u2019d want them to take away when they\u2019re thinking about initiatives in their company, either starting new ones are finding ways to cut back?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: I would really encourage the C-suite to get an inventory to truly understand across the enterprise what are the projects \u2013 the initiatives \u2013 that are currently in place, and then what I see pretty much every year with a budget process is new initiatives are added to that. So before any of those things are funded for the C-suite team to take enough time to say what are we already doing? What of those things do we keep, and then what do we add?<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: As you\u2019re thinking about doing an inventory and looking at what your organization is doing as a senior executive team, don\u2019t just look top down. Start at the base layer of your leadership and management, the people managing your frontline contributors, and take a very hard look at what\u2019s happening there.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Once you\u2019ve done the inventory, what does success with initiatives look like?<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah, I think it\u2019s an important point, right? Which is that success in doing this doesn\u2019t just mean that you\u2019re sort of funding what you\u2019re doing better. It also means you can do things that really are going to contribute, you know, powerfully to what is going to drive the business forward. So there\u2019s a combination of benefits here. I mean sometimes you\u2019ll see as a part of doing this exercise that there\u2019s this little jewel of initiative that really isn\u2019t getting the support it needs, right? And okay, we\u2019re gonna put some resource into that. Sometimes it\u2019s: This thing is a dog, right? We\u2019re gonna kill it and we\u2019re going to make sure it stays dead and sometimes it\u2019s a, \u201cHey, this means we can do this. We can pursue something that\u2019s really pretty exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: I think what we find is that when companies do fewer initiatives, the most important ones finally get the support they need because people have the time, they have the focus, they have the energy to really move that initiative forward. The fewer they\u2019re doing, they\u2019re doing those fewer much better, and so instead of every initiative getting to move things to steps, one or two big initiatives can move things significantly farther forward.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: We\u2019ve talked a lot about handling initiatives that are kind of pushed down onto you, but I\u2019m also wondering about the way that sometimes managers reach out and grab initiatives that maybe they shouldn\u2019t. It has happened where sometimes managers will say, \u201cOh gosh, my team needs a piece of that project, or my team needs a seat at that table\u201d and suddenly you\u2019re contributing to initiative overload even though you know it\u2019s a problem, so how can you resist that urge to kind of horn in to a project where you feel like maybe you should have a seat at that table even if you don\u2019t have time?<\/p>\n MICHAEL WATKINS: Yeah. There\u2019s a question of managerial maturity here, and unfortunately not all managers are mature, right? They\u2019re not able to distinguish between those things that they should be doing \u2013 or more importantly committing their people to be doing because that\u2019s often where the cost rests \u2013 as opposed to what are all of the lovely little pies I\u2019d love to have my fingers in.<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: In some ways I believe this is at the heart of it: We all want to be involved. We all want to be well-thought of. We all want to be showing that we\u2019re making progress and improvements and making things happen and we have limits. And so I think that\u2019s the challenge here is: \u201cWhat\u2019s the highest and best use of my time? Yes, I\u2019d love to weigh in on that project. With everything else we\u2019re being asked to deliver, can we?\u201d Sometimes the organization is pushing us to do it, sometimes we are part of the problem because we want to be in there and we put ourselves forth for volunteering for this or being a part of this and we\u2019re the ones that sometimes cause our individual initiative overload.<\/p>\n SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So if you\u2019re just a middle manager or individual employee, is it realistic that there\u2019s something you could do to fight initiative overload at your company?<\/p>\n ROSE HOLLISTER: I\u2019d say start with your own area and look at: \u201cWhat do we have on our plates? And then be realistic with what does it take, not to just support our own initiatives, but what are our interdependencies and then working to say, \u201cWhat can we limit? Can we get additional resources? Are there things we can stop doing? Can we move the calendar out? So, when I think about this as a middle manager, what I really think about is that locus of control. What does that middle manager, what are they able to impact? What are they able to influence? Because they can start with their area.<\/p>\n Part of this is also making sure that they\u2019ve had the conversations. I worked with somebody for years who was very well-thought of and people kept saying, \u201cGive him this new responsibility, give him this new area.\u201d And this came up year after year and his response was always, \u201cI will take that on when I get the resources,\u201d and as an employee I was like, \u201cCan we say no? Is that okay? I felt bad. I thought, oh, we\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n But what I realized is that his answer was the right answer, not just for our function but for the organization.<\/p>\n ALISON BEARD: HBR \u041e \u043b\u0438\u0434\u0435\u0440\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435<\/em>\u00a0will be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation from Harvard Business Review.<\/p>\n This episode was produced by Mary Dooe.\u00a0On Leadership<\/em>\u2019s team includes Maureen Hoch, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, and Ian Fox.<\/p>\n If this episode helped you, please share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. While you\u2019re there, consider leaving us a review.<\/p>\n \u041a\u043e\u0433\u0434\u0430 \u0432\u044b \u0431\u0443\u0434\u0435\u0442\u0435 \u0433\u043e\u0442\u043e\u0432\u044b \u043a \u043d\u043e\u0432\u044b\u043c \u043f\u043e\u0434\u043a\u0430\u0441\u0442\u0430\u043c, \u0441\u0442\u0430\u0442\u044c\u044f\u043c, \u0442\u0435\u043c\u0430\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u0438\u043c \u0438\u0441\u0441\u043b\u0435\u0434\u043e\u0432\u0430\u043d\u0438\u044f\u043c, \u043a\u043d\u0438\u0433\u0430\u043c \u0438 \u0432\u0438\u0434\u0435\u043e \u0441 \u043b\u0443\u0447\u0448\u0438\u043c\u0438 \u043c\u0438\u0440\u043e\u0432\u044b\u043c\u0438 \u044d\u043a\u0441\u043f\u0435\u0440\u0442\u0430\u043c\u0438 \u0432 \u043e\u0431\u043b\u0430\u0441\u0442\u0438 \u0431\u0438\u0437\u043d\u0435\u0441\u0430 \u0438 \u043c\u0435\u043d\u0435\u0434\u0436\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0442\u0430, \u043d\u0430\u0439\u0434\u0438\u0442\u0435 \u0432\u0441\u0435 \u044d\u0442\u043e \u043d\u0430 HBR.org.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Company #Suffering #Initiative #Overload<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ALISON BEARD: Welcome to\u00a0HBR On Leadership. I\u2019m HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard. On this show, we share case studies and conversations with the world\u2019s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. We carefully curate this feed from across the HBR portfolio, aiming to help you unlock […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n