Tom was overwhelmed by everything that he had to do. He needed additional resources, but he wasn’t able to convince his manager to move forward to hire anyone yet. We talked about the conversations that he had with his manager so far. He said, “I created a list of all the work that we have to do and how my current team is unable to handle it all. I asked for two more people and showed how the work would be divided up among the team. My boss agreed that I need help, but doesn’t seem to move forward to get approval from the CEO. I am not sure what else should I do?”
What gets measured gets managed is the old saying.
Sometimes the conversations are great, but hard data can be even better. I asked Tom if he had any kind of data that he could use to show how much work his team is doing and the impact that it is having? He responded, “I don’t have anything like that to share with my boss.” We talked about the ways that he could create something to show what the workload looks like that he could share with his manager. He got excited to begin to build out this information with his team. I encouraged him to look at any system data that could also help make this easier for ongoing tracking.
A leader doesn’t only increase the visibility by talking about what their team does, but also when they need help. A leader has to advocate for additional resources as soon as they see that things are shifting. It is easy to hope that it will get better, but that isn’t going to happen in most cases. The easiest way to see that issues are building is to monitor how your team is doing and whether things are getting dropped. Those are the warning signs that the workload is not sustainable for the long term.
When one approach isn’t working to get what you want, you have to pivot and look for another way to be heard.
Sending regular updates that include hard facts makes it much more difficult to ignore what is happening. It is up to you as the leader to find the best way to be heard and how to influence the decision to bring on additional resources.