6 Tell-Tale Symptoms Of A Broken Workflow

Are any of these things part of your normal day-to-day?

1. You are constantly being pulled in a million directions.
2. You are constantly reacting to the "emergency of the day."
3. You are constantly needed for approvals and reviews.
4. You can't get your own work done because you are a slave to others'.
5. You start early and finish late but still can't seem to get everything done.
6. You feel busy all day, but you can't really point to anything specific that you finished at the end of it.

If you experience any one of these on a day-to-day basis, you could be in trouble.

We all experience these symptoms from time to time, but if it happens for too many days (or weeks) in a row, something is broken.Don't panic.It's normal to ebb and flow like this. What's not normal is experiencing these symptoms chronically.

Here are some things you can think/do/remember that will help alleviate these symptoms:

There is always an infinite amount of work to be done--so working harder or longer isn't a feasible long-term solution.Just because it's urgent doesn't mean it's important. Define what's important first, then go after what's important AND urgent.I can admit, it feels good to be needed, but if people can't move forward on their work because they need something from you, YOU are the bottleneck. Your team is counting on your to empower them with the tools and resources to move faster without you overseeing every little thing.Being busy doesn't mean you're productive. Productive means you have a measurable output. Busy is just an "energy consumption" metric that tells you your RPMs.

2 Minute Action:

Here are some options for today.

• Look up the Eisenhower Decision Matrix and use it to prioritize your tasks for today.
• Schedule a "retrospective" with your team, partner, colleagues, or clients. In it, you should ask "what went so well that we should keep doing it?" and "what should we stop doing or could be improved?"
• Create a Scrum board that makes it really clear what is done and what is still being worked on.

It's your responsibility to identify and solve problems in yourself, for your clients, for your patients, for your students, or for your team.Until you train and empower them to, no one else is going to do it for you.

Why The Grumpiest Person Is Your Best Friend

"Who is your grumpiest, most irritable, most frustratingly difficult IT guy?""Can you introduce me to him?"

Sounds crazy, but let me tell you why I wanted to meet this person so much.

I was running a software development team at the time.We were building a data visualization software for a government client--which posed a number of challenges.They were using old technology, which meant that a lot of the cool new features we wanted to add wouldn't work. We had to do things very differently if we wanted to get our customer these new features.They were also prone to a lot of needs for approvals, which meant it was slow to implement anything new.We also were up against personalities and politics, so we needed to make sure that the decision-makers were on our side.

So how do you get this new technology past an IT department so furiously vigilant to foreign antibodies?

You call the IT department and you ask for the most irritable, most frustratingly difficult IT guy who could possibly say "no" to your project.I'm dead serious--I've done this.

You ask for that person and you review your concept with them.

The point is that by winning over a decision-maker (or a decision-influencer) like this, you've done 90% of the work up-front. You didn't build out any code, but you solved a ton of problems before they happened.Make them your best friend and you will have a much better chance of success.On a single phone call, you have now increased outcome quality, decreased cost, and dramatically increased speed-to-market.

2 Minute Action

A call like this probably won't take 2 minutes, but that doesn't mean it won't take 2 minutes to schedule it.Who is someone who could say no to your project? How early on can you get them into your process?If it's not a person, what will happen at the last second that will prevent you from achieving your goal? Budget? Timeline?Take 2 minutes to call that out into the light and schedule the meeting, call, or workshop to address this head-on.By frontloading the work you get to solve problems before they happen.You will have a happier team, a lower cost, and higher quality output.

What's Enough?

Enough is enough.

Does it work? Good.

If it can be better, a good question to ask is "how much better?"

If it costs 10x more to have the "best," but you can get 80% of the way there for 10x less the cost . . . is that really the "best?"If you're NASA, it might be worth it. If that manifold breaks, it could be lost lives and literally millions of dollars.Chances are, your stakes aren't as high as NASA's, so you should probably consider what "enough" is to get the job done.

Also, if it can be better, it's worth asking "how much better does it need to be to get to the next step?"

The difference between 90 mph and 100 mph isn't as big as the difference between 100 mph and 110 mph.Wind resistance increases exponentially and requires a disproportionate amount of fuel and power as the speedometer goes up.Sometimes, the place you're going isn't worth it either.

2 Minute Action

What's one big task you have to do today?Could you make it smaller?Can it be an email instead of a meeting?Can it be an article instead of a novel?Can it be a B- instead of an A+?