Unloading The Management Overload Problem

UNLOADING THE MANAGEMENT OVERLOAD PROBLEM
By
Bill Cottringer

“I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.” ~Erma Bombeck.

Is it just my imagination or do other managers feel overwhelmed with the current overload in all the things we are expected to do these days and not having enough time to get them done?. I think it is a good thing to pause and think about what is going on, why it is happening, and what the most reasonable solutions are. This is really problem-solving 101 in its most basic form.

There are many books out now, such as Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management, that warn us that management knowledge has peaked and may now need to be redefined from the ground up. This means re-examining the purpose that management presently serves. Originally, management’s purpose was to manage employee relationships in building teams to work together effectively to translate their leader’s vision and purpose into results that proved success. However, today the role of manager is much more and hence the total overload meltdown.

In the continual effort for business to be lean and mean and more competitive and profitable, there has been an elimination of a very critical level in the organization—the supervisors, who are needed to train, organize, monitor, coach, motivate and correct performance of the employees working to achieve the company’s mission and goals. Now without a person devoted full-time to doing that job—not just with the title and a separate full-time job as an employee—who is going to do all that work?

This elimination of supervision and all the work of supervising that hasn’t been done has showed up in a lower quality of employee performance and lower quality of service or product delivered by companies. Consumers want more for less. Add the uncertainty of what performance is possible in this new exploding ‘Information Age’ and we have a real mess. We have the problem of overload and don’t understand it well enough to do anything about it. All we know is how uncomfortable we are getting.

This is where we have to put our heads together and get very creative and even crazy in redefining very basic things like what the problem is, what our purpose is, how we set priorities, how we view time and how we teach others better organizational skills and needed structure to manage huge problems. Effective management in our future will require some very sacred paradigm transformations. Here are a few to consider.

1. We really don’t have the answers to these questions and to think we do will just keep us from finding the real ones. What we should do right now is to reach consensus on the main problem—the overwhelming overload we all feel. After all, misery loves company! To not openly acknowledge the overload is denial and being out of touch with reality.

2. One crazy idea is to redefine your “management” purpose in the organization. It may be to stop dividing everything into priorities and non-priorities; it could be that everything is a priority—even operational emergencies that you think should have bee better planned for—and you have to figure out how to get everything done. When you waste time working hard on “non-priorities” your negative feelings about doing so keep you from being as productive as you can be and feeling like you are being successful. That leads to compounded distress which is very unproductive. Are you beginning to question what your main purpose is in your organization?

3. We also may need to redefine what ‘success’ is to include something else we hadn’t though about and maybe even include everything. One thing is for sure—the amount of success you feel from your efforts is closely related to how you define success itself. And just because you let someone else define it for you, doesn’t mean they have it right. Maybe success is a very private thing only you can define for you. Do you have a good handle on what success means for you?

4, To get everything done though, you have to change your whole concept of time, from the traditional ‘mechanical-sequence’ concept to a more unconventional fluid, psychological version. This just means not judging the importance of this priority over that one and just devote your full attention and efforts to do whatever it is you are doing right now. Time has a funny way of expanding with that approach. It is frequently called the eternal now moment. How do you currently view time?

5. Just being open to possibilities and being flexible enough to change our idea of what management should and shouldn’t be doing is the best beginning to unraveling this annoying discomfort we are all feeling from overload. How flexible are you being with what is going on?

6. I used to have an unusual schedule I thought up on my first job forty years ago as a case worker in a maximum security prison and I think I’ll resurrect it now. I reserved mornings to do the tedious things I had to do and schedule needed appointments; then I scheduled spontaneity for the afternoons just to se what might turn up that needed my attention. I always slept well with that routine, not going to bed feeling like I still had so many more things I needed to do. What kind of new schedule would be good for you?

7. No matter how we throw the dice, we really do need to figure out how to have our cake and eat it too. And the only way I know how to do that is to question the order in which I think I ought to approach things and just do them—like running faster and bringing the finishing line closer simultaneously. That doubles my results in half the time.