Everyone I encounter, professionally and personally, has more on their plates than they could possibly accomplish. In virtually every business, organizations are trying to do more, with fewer resources and people, in shorter periods of time. That seems to leak over into our personal lives, with each of us over committing to each other.
At some point, you start seeing very dis functional behaviors: Stress levels high, tempers short, people unhappy, people frustrated, fingers pointing, blame being passed and so forth.
I’m working with one large organization that has undergone a series of severe resource cutbacks over the past 2 years. They have cut the resources, but they haven’t reworked the work. I encounter a lot of “thrashing.” This is characterized by a lot of start and stop, immense levels of activity, but nothing is ever completed and results aren’t being produced.
Too much of the time, I see people focused on improving the productivity and effectiveness—sometimes translated into, “How do I accomplish more in less time.” People never consider stopping things, they look at how they can change to do more. This breaks at some point. Organizations literally break, they fail to perform, management and shareholders find new people to do the job. Personally, we break down. Illness is up, bills to analysts/shrinks/pharmacists/our local barkeeper are up, the quality of our relationships is down.
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