Is Your Team Stuck in the Weeds?

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Is your team stuck in the weeds and dragging you down with them?

I asked people to tell me how they know when they’re in the weeds and these were a few of my favorite responses:

I spent 8 hours working on a report only to realize a week later that no one ever opened it.

I was two hours into a meeting before realizing it could have been replaced by a 5-minute email.

I was two hours into crafting an email before realizing could have been replaced with a 5-minute phone call.

I spent 45 minutes down a stock image rabbit hole in search of the perfect images for an internal-use-only presentation.

I once spent an hour of what was supposed to be a strategy session arguing about whether the idea we were proposing was “disruptive” or a “breakthrough” and then spent the next hour discussing whether the first hour was “wasteful” or “pointless.”

Consequences of Being Stuck in the Weeds

Getting stuck in the weeds has terrible consequences.

It’s Demoralizing

It’s irritating to know that you’re not devoting your time to the work that could really make a difference. You remember why you took your job, what excited you about it, but that’s a…