BLOOD SWEAT & BUSINESS

EVERYONE IS BUSY. NOTHING IS MOVING

How sensible decisions quietly add up to too much

ISSUE ONE: OVERWHELM

FROM THE FIELD: Forty top priorities and one team taking the blame

THE PRACTICE: The question to ask before anyone says yes

OVERWHELM: WHY THIS MONTH

Almost every organisation I have worked in carries the same private suspicion, that the effort going in should be producing more than it is. In autumn it gets louder. The year is closing, the plan is behind, and the instinct is to push harder through the last quarter.

I have started here because overwhelm sits underneath most of the other problems organisations bring me, and because it is the one most reliably misread as a failure of the people experiencing it. This month I want to show you where it actually comes from, and what you can take off the system before January.

Lizzy

IN THIS ISSUE

Reading Room
Forty Top Priorities
From the Field
Forty Top Priorities
From the Field

The team everyone blamed for being slow had forty top priorities, no way to compare them, and was spending its time estimating work it had no time to do. What changed once someone counted.

Read more →
From the Field
Nothing Has to Be Wrong for Everything to Become Too Much
The Big Idea
Nothing Has to Be Wrong for Everything to Become Too Much
The Big Idea

Every decision that added to your organisation's workload made sense at the time. Together they've become a weight the whole place now spends its energy carrying, and adding more only makes it heavier.

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The Big Idea
If We Do This, What Stops?
The Practice
If We Do This, What Stops?
The Practice

Every organisation asks whether a new thing is worth doing. Almost none asks what will stop to make room for it. One question, usable in meetings you already attend, without anyone's permission.

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The Practice

“The organisation was spending the team's working time to ask how much working time the team had.”

From the Field: Forty Top Priorities

PATTERNS IN THIS ISSUE

LIBRARY
Drag
Drag

Everything an organisation is carrying that is not moving it forward. Drag compounds rather than adds, which is why capable organisations get slower the harder they try.

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