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When everything is labelled as urgent, productivity suffers. In this episode of The Experimental Leader, Melanie Parish and Mel Rutherford explore how poor prioritization creates unnecessary stress, confusion, and rework. Discover practical strategies for balancing vision with execution, empowering your team, improving communication, and leading with greater clarity instead of constant urgency.

 

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Traps and Tricks: Vision vs. Volume

Welcome to a new episode of Traps and Tricks. I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m an academic psychologist. I’m the author of The Glass Cliff: One Trans Man’s Leadership Odyssey, and I’m the co-host of the Experimental Leader Podcast.

Hello, and I’m Melanie Parish. I’m an author, a content creator, a coach, and I’m the co-host of the Experimental Leader Podcast. Welcome,
welcome. So, Melanie, what traps have you been encountering in your leadership recently?

Well, the one I’m thinking about is how I assign work when I’m working with someone. So sometimes, like someone who reports to me, I am in charge of you know. Somebody sometimes has a bucket of things they always do, and sometimes I need them to do something that is in what I see as the leader in the organization, and I have been thinking about the flow of work. Particularly, the trap is that I just say everything is urgent, and there’s no discernment about what’s the most urgent.

And what kinds of troubles can that lead to?

Well, it’s like if everything is the same amount of urgency, then there’s no prioritization, and it’s really muddy when when I want something right away, but I want lots of things right away, and then I realize the throughput of the work isn’t as fast as I want because there’s only one person in charge of all that, and then I don’t have what I need. But also, the person who’s doing the work I think is suffering because they have too much flow of work, and they aren’t getting my help in prioritization.

So it has an impact on the output and the productivity. What impact does it have on your employee?

Well, I think yeah. I mean, I think they have more work to do because they’re not only doing the work, but they’re also trying to make sense out of the prioritization of the work, and when it’s just more work, more work, more work. How do they know what you know? What the more work is? How to prioritize the next thing that comes their way? And it can also, I think feel a little push me pull you like that old Doctor Dolittle animal the push me pull you the llama on both sides and because I want it all I want you know but yesterday you said you wanted this and today you say you want this but all of those things take more time than you’re giving me and so I think it can be a bit painful for the employee, and and I’m as I’m saying all of this, I’m like, huh, what has me be the one assigning the work? And I think some of it’s because we’re working on a lot of branding right now, and that is sort of in my like figuring out the vision and then having us do it, but I, as a leader, I notice that workflow is better when I’m not giving it one thing at a time because it leads to all these challenges. It’s better if someone holds a bucket and chooses how to manage it, and manages the flow of work rather than being assigned the work. I think there are problems with assigning work. It’s sort of this top-down sort of feeling that I don’t like.

So this is a trap that I imagine a lot of leaders fall into. What are the tricks that help you get out of this?

Yeah, I’m not sure what’s going to get me out of this at the moment. Some of it is just so so. In an urgent situation, the the trick is to help with the prioritization. So if I’m assigning work, I need to also take on some of the prioritization. So it’s not adding work of prioritization to the work, so that it’s one thing I can do. But I go back in the big scheme of things that it’s better to have longer timelines to have a person who’s holding the bucket, for example, the website bucket or the social media bucket, or the marketing bucket, and they can manage the flow of work, and I can play on their team. I think that’s the long-term foil to this feeling that I, as the leader, set direction. Like I want this to be our. Communication plan, and I’m thinking at that level. And then the person who’s more tactical is managing how to meet the the vision, rather than me saying send an email today, send an email tomorrow, you know, whatever. That’s that level. It’s not good for me. It’s not good for the employee. It’s not good for the flow of work. So I think the trick is a longer timeline with that requires less prioritization overall. I feel like I just had a coaching session.

What role does communication between you and your employee play in getting out of this trap?

Well, I think I mean we have some things that just are tracking what work I’m assigning, which there’s all sorts of things like that out there. Stand-up meetings, do that. What are you going to do today? What are you going to do, you know? What did you do yesterday? Kind of things. We meet more frequently, just so there’s more check-ins, one of my jobs I think right now is to try to look at the work early so that we don’t go too far down a path. So that if there’s a shift that needs to happen, it can happen really early in the in the creation of what we’re you know the content we’re creating rather than after it’s all done and then we go back and revise. So I’m trying to be available for that. I still think, wow, timeline extending timeline is your friend in these situations.

How will you know if your employees are feeling this kind of urgency and disorganization?

I don’t know the answer to that. If you’re not asking them, like I’m very aware right now with the person that we’re talking about, who’s also the one who runs our podcast, so I think she might be listening. But I am aware that I need to check in more frequently. I think a good employee, like a good, like a really good employee, doesn’t say anything. Like they’re managing it; they’re not trying to make waves. You don’t want them to have to cry uncle, though. So you want to check in more frequently?

Yeah, I’m. It’s curious to hear you say that. I would. I’m wondering if a good employee would find ways to communicate when they think they’ve been put in a situation where they’re not being as effective as they can be.

I think it can go both ways. Like, there can be friction there. There cannot be, like, it. But there. What I am aware of is somebody is making the decision about what moves forward and what doesn’t in this situation, and probably I want it to be them part of the time and me part of the time. And so, getting that balance right is part of the relationship and the balance.

And that, yeah, to me, that sounds like it has a lot to do with the relationship and with the trust in the relationship.

Right, absolutely, and yeah, I’m really grateful for that in this relationship. For me, that I there’s no nobody’s mad at anybody. It’s just that I notice my own behavior because we’re you know so much is happening and it’s exciting and it all has to happen right now, but it can’t happen right now. So it is an interesting position, and I think this is really a common challenge for leaders. In in you want to vision the work. I think it’s also part of the dream of like AI right now. You can have it right away, but you can only have part of it right away, and then it has to be executed on. So AI actually could compound the problem rather than solve all of it too, which is interesting.

What an interesting topic, and I think probably a very relevant topic for a lot of leaders. Thank you.

Well, it’s been a good conversation. Go experiment.

Go experiment.

 

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