How do you avoid overloading your team?
People are burned out. Teams are over capacity. There isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done that’s being asked of us. This is what our leaders expect. There are too many competing priorities. Our culture is working hard and setting aggressive deadlines. That’s just how it is here.
We hear these sentiments often from busy teams. (That “our culture” statement was pulled directly from a startup’s website.) But are they accurate?
In my almost-20-year career thus far, the following 3 things have always been true:
- My team’s time has been in high demand by many different stakeholders.
- Although I’ve worked hard, I’ve rarely (if ever) been overloaded or worked to burnout.
- Despite points 1 and 2, I’ve maintained great working relationships.
The secret to avoiding taking on too much work is simple: Learn how to push back, thoughtfully and constructively.
To do this, you will need to:
- Know your team’s capacity & understand your priorities
- Communicate expectations to your stakeholders
- Offer alternatives
Know your team’s capacity & understand your priorities
This a straightforward first step, but is foundational to successfully managing workload. You must have an understanding of how much work your team can produce, and at any given point in time, understand how much is available.
This doesn’t mean time-tracking down to the minute. I typically characterize projects as small, medium, and large, and use some set standards for my team, such as, “A senior manager can work on 1 large and 1 small project at a time.” I tracked their assigned projects in a project management tool (e.g. Trello, Smartsheets, spreadsheet).
It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t need to include every single task — you can group them into larger categories. And there will be some variation — a more experienced person will be able to complete more work than a newer person. But you should be able to get a close approximation that gives you a high-level view into your team’s workload.
You need this baseline to be able to answer the question, “How much capacity does your team have available?” If you’re not even attempting to track capacity, your team might already be overloaded.
The other key piece of preparation that you need is to confirm your team’s priorities and ensure that you are aligned with your leader. You can’t work on everything, so you need to work on the right things. Make sure that you know what the “right things” are, and that your leader is in agreement that your team’s focus is on those “right things.”
I developed a simple, lightweight prioritization matrix for my team, with my leader’s blessing. This gave me day-to-day guidance of how to assess requests, and I knew my leader would back up my decision making. You need to have your leader in your corner to support you if there’s any disagreement on priorities.
Communicate expectations to your stakeholders
Once you understand your team’s current bandwidth, the harder part comes: Delivering the message to stakeholders who want your team’s time.
The most important tip about communicating is this: Communicate as clearly as possible and as early as possible. Avoid surprises!
There are two primary messages you want to convey: your current work and priorities, and the process for changes.
Your current work and priorities
First, be really clear about the work your team does. What is the primary focus? What value do you provide? Make sure you’ve defined your mission, vision, and strategy. Build a pitch deck. Develop a prioritization approach that outlines how you prioritize requests.
You’ll use this messaging both reactively and proactively. Reactive messaging is common — someone asks you to work on something, and you point to your team’s mission as a reason you should or should not work on it.
But proactive messaging is actually more helpful — get ahead of requests by explaining to leaders early and often about the work you do. For example, when a new leader started at my company, I would set up an introductory meeting with them to let them know how my team could partner with them and what type of work we did. This set the stage for when they were eventually ready to begin asking for support.
One challenge many teams run into is when work gets offloaded to them that no one else has bandwidth for. Or that the team’s value was being minimized to menial tasks. For instance, I’ve heard a Project Manager say, “Project management is about more than just scheduling meetings and taking notes! We do so much more than that.”
I recommend focusing on what you do offer instead of what you don’t. As an example, I’ve seen this type of slide frequently:
This slide does communicate, very clearly, what this team does and does not do. But the “does not do” side has a bit of a negative slant. It also disparages the work that falls into that bucket. Why even spend time talking about what you don’t do? If you’re clear enough about your team’s purpose and the value you deliver, it will speak for itself.
Finally, make sure to be transparent about your priorities. Where possible, provide a public view of projects your team is currently working on. If you know that a leader is planning to request your team’s support, keep them up to date on your current capacity and priorities. Reserve space for known priorities, and track a backlog of requests as capacity opens up. Encourage your business partners to plan ahead for requests, and set deadlines if possible.
Process for changes
What if a stakeholder is aware of your team’s work and priorities, but still wants to push for you to take on their project?
Maybe it fits your team’s mission and is a priority but your team is out of bandwidth. Maybe broader company priorities are shifting. Maybe it isn’t a high enough priority, but the stakeholder is going to escalate anyway.
You need to have a process for changes. It should be simple — don’t create unnecessary red tape — but it must exist as a decision point.
At a high level, the process should be:
The last step is key. Priorities change — that’s life. But everyone’s least favorite thing to do is cut something from the list. So what most often happens is that new priorities are just added on top of everything else, and nothing is dropped to make room for them.
When I was a new manager in consulting, a senior manager asked me to add a new task to my worklist, and I responded, “I can’t do it — I have a full plate already.” And she gave me great advice: “When a leader asks you to do something, you never say no. You say, ‘Here are the things I’m currently working on. What would you like me to drop in order to add this to the list?’” Come up with a solution together.
It’s simple. It’s clear. And it’s the only way to keep your team from being buried under an avalanche of new priorities.
Offer alternatives
The final step is what keeps people from giving you dirty looks or colorful language when you deliver the information that you won’t be able to prioritize their request.
You should never leave people empty-handed. Offering suggestions, resources, alternatives — this demonstrates that you care, that you’re a true partner, and you don’t want to damage the relationship.
How this could look:
- Offer alternative services. My team had a 3-tier service model, which included self-serve playbooks and advisory/consultative support. Offer a brainstorming session with their team or some coaching for someone from their team who might do the work instead. Start with something small to get the larger project rolling.
- Provide examples of previous work. If your team has delivered something similar in the past, it could be used as a reference or even a starting point for someone else.
- Suggest a different timeframe. Maybe this quarter is particularly busy, but if they have the flexibility to wait until next quarter, you could provide the support they’re asking for.
- Refer them to another team. There might be other resources around the company who can provide similar or partial support. (Make sure those teams are able to field those requests, though!)
They might not accept your alternatives. But it never hurts to offer, and to provide a small amount of support or point people in the right direction.
Conclusion
Pushing back on requests is not easy. You have to be really confident in your team’s focus and your capacity. You need your leader to support you. And you need to get comfortable with delivering difficult messages to stakeholders, some of whom may be senior to you.
But the end result is well worth it: A manageable workload. Space to be thoughtful, focus, and deliver great work. An environment where they can thrive, not just survive.
