Business leaders face ever-growing demands on their and their team’s time and energy. Those demands also impact their people, who can struggle to juggle responsibilities, deadlines, and expectations. The overload and frantic chaos to keep up can result in inefficiencies that lead to stress and burnout. Leaders must learn how to manage workloads while maintaining efficiency to allow their teams to operate more effectively without sacrificing well-being.

The Roots of Burnout

Burnout doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, it’s often a—pardon the pun—slow burn. When employees are overburdened with tasks, have unclear priorities, or lack the tools to complete their work efficiently, stress mounts. 

Even employees operating in their Personal Core Focus can still become overwhelmed when they’re challenged far beyond their skill level, pushing them beyond their GWC Flow Channel. 

Over time, pushing too hard can lead to exhaustion, disengagement, and decreased productivity, ultimately damaging team culture and revenue. This sentiment is especially true when the team faces frustrations like fragmented tools and resources or siloed processes. 

However, much like the proverbial boiling frog, people may not realize they’re barreling down the road to burnout until it’s too late. Meanwhile, overly ambitious leaders may create “stretch goals” that cause their team members to snap. 

Does the top brass at any company really know what’s going on? Endless examples of memes, movies, and cartoon characters poke fun at questioning how someone so seemingly inept could lead a business. Too often, business leaders become trapped by an iceberg of ignorance. 

Icebergs can be deceiving. You can only see a small portion above the surface, yet they can block even the most productive team’s floe (whether it’s a sheet of floating ice or your team’s production “flow.”) However, you can use technology to avoid facing an iceberg of ignorance by increasing your leadership team’s line of sight to the most important parts of the business. 

Anatomy of an Iceberg of Ignorance

Sidney Yoshida, a quality control expert, introduced the concept of the iceberg of ignorance in the 1980s. It describes the increasing lack of awareness the higher up the chain of command one goes in an organization. 

Yoshida posited that top management is only aware of 4% of a company’s problems, while middle management knows about 9%. Meanwhile, supervisors understand 70% of the problems, and front-line workers are all well aware of the issues. 

According to this somewhat debated viewpoint, most of an organization’s problems are hidden from those capable of making changes and improvements. With limited visibility to these issues, the leadership team cannot make informed decisions to serve the greater good of the organization. 

This lack of awareness can manifest in all-too-familiar ways. 

  1. Employee Attrition

When unhappy employees leave a company, it negatively impacts team morale (especially when people watch the “right people” leave.) While the reasons may not be apparent to leaders without direct interaction with individual contributors, failing to understand and address the issue only exacerbates the problem. It can result in even higher employee turnover and lower productivity from those who stay. For the business itself, continually replacing employees is expensive.

  2. Inconsistent or Ineffective Processes

When leaders don’t know about faulty core processes, they indirectly contribute to minor annoyances in workers’ daily tasks. Without a system to identify and solve operational issues, leaders allow bigger issues like wasted material, inconsistencies, or frequent rework to impact the bottom line. In turn, this can also impact the ability to upgrade equipment or onboard new hires. 

  3. Reputation Damage From Dissatisfied Customers 

In the social media age, a seriously disgruntled customer can destroy a company’s reputation. Unhappy customers may simply not use a business’s services again or tell others about their negative experiences. Leadership’s failure to address the root cause of customer complaints can result in widespread revenue loss. Depending on the industry, even a minor loss in reputation can give a competitor the advantage they need to overtake the market. 

  4. Safety Issues

Of all the issues hidden in the iceberg of ignorance, safety issues are the most serious. Top management must be aware of problems that directly affect the health and safety of their employees. Operating faulty equipment or requiring unrealistic workloads can have permanent consequences. One inattentive moment when a tricky gear fails can result in serious injury or fatalities. Likewise, the cumulative impact on mental health from a toxic work environment or unrealistic workloads can have equally devastating results. No one wants any of that to happen.

See the Whole Iceberg

So how do leaders increase their ability to see more of the iceberg and avoid the potential consequences of what they don’t know? Leaders need a pulse on the toughest issues facing their people and a system for cascading those messages up and down.

There’s a delicate balance between seeing “enough” and getting overwhelmed with too much information to be effective. Using the right tools and a software platform that prioritizes what’s most important (the 80/20 rule) can keep leaders focused. 

Technology helps simplify the process and make response time faster.

Much of that begins with building an intentional team culture of open and honest transparency. Here is where EOS® can help!

For example, the Level 10 Meeting Agenda has team trust baked right into it. Running these weekly meetings on EOS One® puts issues front and center so no one misses them. Things like headlines and cascaded messages become intentional parts of the meeting rhythm. That way things don’t get swept under the rug. 

Plus, the EOS animals encourage people attending the meeting to challenge the way an issue is being discussed (like when people miss the point) in a fun way that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Technology to Melt the Iceberg of Ignorance

With a business operating system in place to see all the problems impacting their organization, leaders have the information necessary to solve them. A regular Meeting Pulse for everyone in the company creates a structure for sharing communications both up and down the chain while solving the most important problems. Reviewing team Scorecards during weekly meetings also offers the opportunity to visualize the health of the organization more clearly.

When the entire company uses the same software, sharing information becomes seamless. It supports the viability of major projects and goals that run across departments and at different levels. Everyone stays on the same page and is accountable for Quarterly Rocks to achieve the company vision. 

Knowledge is power, and the quickest way to melt that iceberg is to allow teams to floe freely again.

How much does technology distract you and your team? Getting to a place where technology benefits focus and attention has proven elusive for most. What if you could learn to use technology to better manage the human energy of your team?

What Is Human Energy?

Human energy is more than just focus, attention, and creativity. It’s also emotional, cognitive, and physical energy. 

Gino Wickman has long taught that EOS® is, at its core, a system for managing human energy. EOS helps business leaders get all their people rowing in the same direction by having the company vision Shared By All.

Every Rock, goal, and to-do should move the organization toward achieving that vision. Yet if we’re constantly distracted by technology’s bells, buzzes, and flashing notifications, how can the leaders of an organization ever hope to achieve, well, anything?

Michael Posner, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, found that if you’re focusing on something and you get interrupted by a simple vibration of a phone nearby, it will take 23 minutes to get back to the same state of focus.

If no one can focus with sustained attention, they’ll never achieve what they want from their business or their lives. Digital technology’s ubiquity challenges our ability to focus and be productive. Yet, it allows us to increase our productivity… if we can manage and control it instead of it controlling us. How do we harness the power of technology without the downsides?

Turning a Challenge Into an Opportunity

Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, did an in-depth study on adults. She discovered that the average time someone can focus on one thing is less than three minutes before a ping or ding takes them off course.

Technology is a part of our everyday lives, and we can’t ignore it. So, how do we leverage tech without disrupting our human energy?

A synchronized working environment gets virtual teams in a shared flow state to help harness their human energy rather than disrupt their productivity. That’s where the Level 10 Meeting agenda comes in. This weekly meeting keeps everyone on the same page and focused on what matters the most.

Aligning our use of technology to sustain our attention and focus will lead to achieving what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow. The flow state has definite benefits. In flow, you have a heightened sense of focus, immersion, creativity, reduced stress, and more joy and happiness.

Plus, when in flow, our productivity can boost by up to 500%. Imagine if you, your Visionary/Integrator (V/I) Duo, and your leadership team could regularly achieve that boost! Now imagine if every team in your company could achieve that level of productivity.

Flow isn’t just an individual experience. When teams hit flow together, oxytocin, the bonding hormone, fosters trust and collaboration. The power of flow is driven by the chemistry of success. A team that works together, truly in sync, achieves more than they ever thought possible. 

Regularly creating flow (either as an individual, interpersonally, or in a group) requires removing distractions to attain complete attention. That means no messages, multitasking, smartphones, social media, email, buzzes, or bings. Without complete, focused attention, you cannot create flow or realize any of its benefits.

Managing Human Energy With Technology

Technology can be the biggest flow blocker. However, the right software can take the collaborative spirit of Level 10 Meetings online, creating a synchronized virtual environment. These environments foster the engagement and trust vital to achieving flow accessibility and team productivity. 

By keeping everyone focused on what matters most during one meeting, we don’t gum up a team’s flow state with endless meetings.

Regardless of the format of a Level 10 Meeting, no one should be sitting around looking at their screens and “multitasking” while one person types. So, ensure everyone has all their notifications off with ZERO emails, phone calls, messages, or multitasking. Call out anyone breaking this rule. 

If you’re afraid you’ll be tempted to sneak peeks, use a freedom app to prevent surfing and maximize focused time with your team.

Managing human energy with technology takes fundamental changes to how we interact with our devices. However, once you’ve mastered your technology, you can unleash its full power to boost your productivity and ultimately achieve your goals.