“Sorry we are too busy to help you”
It’s the top priority for your organisation and yet still there’s a team responding “We can’t do this for you” (because we are busy doing the thing we are measured on).
The strategy has been analysed and debated. The leadership have agreed and done the roadshow communicating the direction. And then the team responsible for executing encounters this — another team responding “We can’t do this for you” (the quiet part: because we are busy doing the thing we are measured on).
I have seen instances of this scenario in every organisation I have worked at or interacted with.
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Why does this happen?
Here are some of the reasons I have seen:
- they feel committed to a different project or goal.
- they feel they won’t be recognised for contributing to “someone else’s goal”
- they don’t understand or value the goal.
That this happens fairly regularly in organisations and for common reasons leads me back to the clarity that people in an organisation understand its goals.
- An organisation which mostly uses projects or outputs as goals may not recognise when contributions to more important goals elsewhere in the organisation may be the most impact they can make.
- Organisations which rely on the heroics of individuals or incentivise based on a vanity metric or output-based metrics will struggle to align on the current most important goal.
- When people don’t understand what the organisation’s goal is or why it matters there will be a significant draw towards other activities they feel they understand better.
Have you experienced this? What was the scenario? What happened? Did your organisation succeed in addressing this issue? What did they do? Sound off in the comments.
Originally published at https://wioota.substack.com on June 28, 2022.
