The Acceleration Trap

This month's issue of the Harvard Business Review has a good article about businesses that consistently take on more than they can handle. We're working on a Strategic Plan for a local firm that falls smack dab into this category. They're a perfect blend of "there's nothing we can't do" bravado coupled with roughly 90% of the senior leadership team actively looking for new jobs (behind the scenes) because they're completely burned out.

We're walking this client through a well-defined process of clarifying their strategy, focusing on key priorities, filtering all new projects and terminating nonessential tasks. It's common sense when looking in from the outside but when you're firmly enmeshed in this type of behavior (i.e., demanding a high level of urgency on a daily basis), it's hard to break the mold.

I know because here, at the best job ever, I would respond in much the same way as the survey data cited in this article. Specifically, >80% of trapped company respondents agree to the statement, "I work under constantly elevated time pressure" and they a) don't see a light at the end of the tunnel of intense working periods or b) regularly get a chance to regenerate.

Because our activities are all client-facing (i.e., we don't assume any nonessential, internal tasks), we cannot terminate projects. We can, however, filter out the time consuming, hand holding projects with needy clients that don't pay well and focus on bigger fish with deeper pockets -- but then we lose sight of the small mom and pops with whom we love to work.

Helping small companies to succeed is often more rewarding than attempting to tackle the pathological dysfunction that's inherent in so many large organizations.

So where does that leave us? Hire more consultants? Maybe but then we have to manage more people and manage the culture. Right now, we're lean and mean and we get along famously. Should we establish more realistic deadlines with our clients? Not a bad idea but we've already set the ridiculous expectations that we're now managing to. "Sure, we can summon the forces of nature. It would be our pleasure."

The most realistic ideas for our company to adopt from this article would be to systematically insert periods of calm in order to recharge our batteries and take a moment to reflect and feel proud of accomplishments.

Yeah, that'll happen.