Pop Quiz.
You game? OK, here goes.
Your team is drowning. It’s chaos, and you know it. You take a step back and notice the following:
- Everyone’s running in different directions, chasing conflicting priorities.
- Emails and Slacks light up around the clock, and it feels endless.
- Balls are dropping, deadlines slipping—everyone’s stretched too thin.
- Meetings? They’re nothing more than fire drills, with zero energy for innovation or strategic thinking.
All of these issues demand your attention. But where do you even begin?
There’s a right answer. It might be obvious to you. And if so, you’re in the minority (according to my statistically invalid research, anyway).
Too many clients of mine come to me with a laundry list of problems they’re struggling to solve. They’re asking for help wrangling their teams into some semblance of productivity.
“How do we make meaningful progress on everything?” they ask.
But they’re asking the wrong question.
They shouldn’t be trying to tackle everything at once. What they should be asking is: What’s the real problem here?
Which of these is the root cause, and which are just symptoms?
In the list above, what I see is a leadership failure (sorry, not sorry) to effectively prioritize (the problem) which is causing a bunch of headless chickens to overwork and not have the space to plan or imagine or dream (symptoms).
To fix the chaos, you have to start at the beginning.
This is something I see all the time in our Pulse Checks.
So, leaders—pay attention. As you talk to your teams, as you gather their feedback on what’s working and where they’re feeling stuck… ask yourself: Is there one problem—just one—that, if solved, would positively impact almost everything else on the list?
I’m not a betting woman. But if I were, I’d bet yes.