May 14, 2025 • 38 mins
Ever wonder if squeezing every ounce of efficiency from your team could actually leave you vulnerable when the unexpected strikes?
In this episode, Teri welcomes back Tom Geraghty for a candid look at the critical—and often overlooked—tension between efficiency and resilience.
Together, they unpack why hyper-optimization can lead to burnout and brittleness, and share practical strategies for leaders to build adaptability into their teams without sacrificing results.
Resources:
- Tom's website: https://psychsafety.co.uk
- Sign up for Tom's newsletter: https://psychsafety.co.uk/newsletter
- Connect with Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraghtytom
Looking for a community of leaders where you can tackle real challenges, share wins, and grow together—without office politics getting in the way? Join Leadership Thought Partners, a coach-led, group-directed space launching in July—early bird pricing ends May 31, 2025 at strongleadersserve.com/ltp!
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teri-m-schmidt/
Get 1-on-1 leadership support from Teri here: https://www.strongleadersserve.com/coaching
Set up an intro call with Teri: https://calendly.com/terischmidt/discoverycall
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Teri Schmidt (00:00):
Have you ever found yourself wondering if
pushing your team for greaterefficiency might actually be
making it harder for them tohandle unexpected challenges?
I'm Terry Schmidt, your host andleadership coach at Strong
Leaders Serve, where I partnerwith caring driven leaders like
you who are under pressure todeliver results through others.
(00:22):
Leaders who can't afford to leadon autopilot or figure it out as
they go, because they need tobring the clarity and trust that
deliver real impact fast.
Today I am thrilled to welcomeback Tom Garrity, Founder and
CEO of Psych Safety.
If you caught our earlierconversation in episode 1 48
about boosting team performanceby reducing cognitive load
(00:45):
through psychological safety,you know, Tom brings a rare
combination of research depthand real world practicality.
In this episode, we're divinginto attention.
Every leader is feeling rightnow, balancing efficiency and
resilience.
So let's get started.
(01:06):
I.
(01:56):
Welcome back to the StrongLeaders Serve Podcast.
Tom, it's so nice to have youagain.
Tom Geraghty (02:00):
Oh, it's so good to be back.
Thank you so much.
Teri Schmidt (02:03):
Yeah.
And for those of you who haven'thad an opportunity to listen to
our last conversation, it was onepisode 1 48, a fascinating
conversation where we weretalking about cognitive load and
the relationship withpsychological safety and how you
can improve your teamperformance when you're thinking
about both of those.
so definitely it was aconversation that, was one of
the highlights of.
(02:24):
Of my time doing these guestinterviews.
So thank you for that.
And thank you again for comingback on.
I saw your newsletter talkingabout the tension between
efficiency and resilient, and Ithought that is a topic that the
compassionate driven leadersthat listen to this podcast are
probably dealing with.
'cause I know there's a lot ofpressure out there, so I'm happy
(02:48):
to have you on to talk about it.
Tom Geraghty (02:49):
I'm really excited to do so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, uh, it's, yeah, it's areally, really interesting
topic, so thank you.
Yeah.
Teri Schmidt (02:54):
Yeah, definitely.
Well, I'm curious, you know,just to start off, what piqued
your interest in this tensionbetween efficiency and
resilience?
And I'd love to hear, you know,if you have a story that you are
able to share about how you'vewitnessed that in the
organizations that you workwith.
Tom Geraghty (03:09):
Yeah, so I think, I think this is one of those
tensions that exists in, inalmost ev in, in, probably in
every organization, and I.
It's one of those things thatonce, once you see it, you can't
unsee it.
The, this constant drive, thisconstant pressure and
incentivization to be moreefficient, to be more lean, To,
(03:31):
you know, to reduce waste and,optimize everything, is probably
almost u ubiquitous across.
From tiny one to, to massivemultinationals and, and people
are rewarded and incentivized,and praised when.
Particularly managers andleaders when, when we make
something more efficient, whenwe, you know, and it sounds like
(03:52):
a great thing to do, right?
And it often is, efficiency isoften a good thing.
And, you know, by, reducingwaste and making things more
cost effective and things likethat, we, we get praise and we
get rewarded for doing so, butwe rarely get rewarded for
making things more resilientbecause resilience is so much
more difficult to measure.
It's so much more high, so muchmore difficult to put a number.
Teri Schmidt (04:14):
Yeah.
Tom Geraghty (04:14):
You know, we can measure efficiency in sort of
things per other thing, liketasks per minute or, you know,
widgets created per person orwhatever it is.
And that's easy to measure andwe can easily, you know, plot it
on a nice dashboard and a nicegraph and point to some impact
that we've had and, andsomething like that.
But it's much harder to measureresilience.
It's, it's much harder to.
(04:35):
to demonstrate what resiliencelooks like in practice, because
also resilience is often onlyseen in response to something
changing or some threat orchange happening.
And so we often only realizedthat we were not resilient after
the fact when it's a bit toolate to add it in.
And so I've seen this in, in allsorts of organizations.
(04:57):
So I think the first time I sawit in my career, so early on in
my career, I worked for a motor,a large motor retail group, and
there was a great deal ofpressure.
It was very metric driven, verynumbers driven, and there was a
great deal of pressure on, I.
On being efficient on, on sortof maximizing our output and
productivity per minute of theday and things like that.
(05:20):
And we were, we had lots ofsystems to record time sheets
and, and tasks done and, and allof this sort of stuff.
And it, and it all appeared likeon face of it, it all appeared
to hum along, but everyone wassort of maxed out and heavily
utilized and, and it only took aminor shock.
(05:41):
If you like, like a, to sendeverything sideways because
there was no, there was no adaptadaptive capacity in the system,
in the organization to respond.
When, when a, when a, you know,when a, when a competitor
launched a new product or did a,did a different thing, or
suddenly the market changes orwe have a bunch of people go off
sick and whenever anything likethat happened, everything went
(06:05):
absolutely sideways, reallyquickly.
And it was sort of at that.
It was through that experience,and it was very early on in my
career that I realized thatthere was a tension between
those things.
And it took, took me a long timeto articulate what I was trying
to, really trying to,understand.
Teri Schmidt (06:18):
Yeah.
Tom Geraghty (06:19):
But, but yeah, that, that was the first time I
saw it.
And I, and I've seen it in allsorts of firms since, and
consulting firms, which is whatI, I've got, you know, more
recent experience of working inlarge consulting firms.
Large consulting firms are anightmare for this because.
Teri Schmidt (06:33):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (06:34):
the people in a consulting firm are the billable
units.
And so we actually, you know,you'll hear about percentage
utilization and things like thatand constantly trying to up that
so that people are, people areutilized at 90 or a hundred
percent.
And of course, if someone'sutilized a hundred percent There
is no space left to even recoveror, or adapt to anything.
(06:56):
And, and, you know, you're,you're basically just planning
it's burnout as a, as anorganizational
Teri Schmidt (07:01):
Right.
That is so well put.
And so, Depressing, I guessyou'd say burnout as an
organizational strategy.
Um, but it is, it's, it is justdressed up probably in nicer
words than that.
But, and nicer charts and, andgraphs.
Um, but definitely is, that youbring up such a good point of,
(07:24):
you know, people being the unitsthere and, and looking at their
utilization.
Tom Geraghty (07:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And of course this is, you know,since, since you know Taylorism
and, and things like that,we've, we've, known, although we
haven't always behaved this way,but we've known that treating
people as machines as units ofproductivity alone is a, is a
route to failure.
It's a, it's a route to burnout,it's a route to, it's a route to
bad things happening.
It's a sh it, it can beeffective or at least, hmm.
(07:53):
It can achieve some results inthe short term, but it's not a
sustainable approach.
Teri Schmidt (07:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It can achieve the results wheneverything's going right and you
don't have that minor shock tothe system like you were talking
about.
And that can, I think, lullleaders into a false sense of
security as, as they're seeingthat'cause the me measurements
that, and metrics that they areaiming for are headed in the
right direction and those.
(08:20):
Silent metrics, the ones thatare a little bit harder to get
our handle on.
You know, even I think about howresilience is measured beyond
just after the fact.
And the closest thing I canthink to it is like, you know,
an annual engagement surveywhere, where people are asking
questions about wellbeing, andkind of assessing that, but.
(08:40):
That has its own problems initself and that it, you know,
isn't measured frequently.
It is self-reported.
It's, you know, so there,there's a lot of, a lot of
challenges there that don'tallow that to have the
credibility as the metricrelated to efficiency.
I.
Tom Geraghty (08:57):
yeah, yeah, definitely.
It's, because these things areoften, you know, they are
self-reported.
They have to be, they're only asaccurate as the safety that
people feel in being honest, I.
And of course they're, they'reonly as accurate as, as the
number of people that actuallyrespond.
And, and ironically, if ifwe're, if we're surveying an
entire organization, we're we'regetting answers from the people
(09:18):
who a love to fill out surveys.
You've got those people who justlove filling out surveys and
you've got the people who havethe time to fill out the survey.
So of course, the people who aremaxed out, burning out, super
utilized, they're not gonna sitand fill out a, an engagement
survey.
So we're not hearing from
Teri Schmidt (09:34):
right.
Yeah.
So true.
So true.
Oh, well, definitely.
Definitely some, issues to workthrough and, and problems to be
solved there.
So I'm glad we're having thisconversation.
so, you know, one, one thingthat comes up with efficiency
is.
Standardization.
And I'm not, I I went down arabbit hole in all of your
(09:57):
newsletters as I was, you know,looking into this topic.
So I'm not sure which one thiscame from, but you were talking
about the invisible cost ofstandardization.
and as you know, our audienceis, is full of compassionate
leaders and they care aboutwellbeing, but they also are
driven and care about results.
So.
They are probably looking atstandardization as a way to
(10:17):
optimize things as well.
And I'm curious from you, youknow, how can they tell when
they've optimized too far, whenthe efficiency is actually
undermining the team's capacityto adapt or recover.
Tom Geraghty (10:29):
I think this is really, this is a really good
question, and it's, and it'sprobably one of those with a,
with, an answer that is, ormaybe not with an answer, but,
but I, I don't know, I think I'mgonna disappoint everyone, but,
the, I think there's, so, yeah.
Just to come back to this ideaof standardization, I think.
The, the idea of standardizationsort of comes back to
manufacturing and, and relatedsort of sorts of industries
(10:52):
where we recognize that there'sa, there's a real power, a real
strength in standardization andmaking sure that we're using
sort of as few different partsand components and tools and
things as possible.
Right.
And it kind of makes sense.
But there's also a danger inthat, you know, and if so, if we
think about technology andorganizations, for example, if
(11:13):
we think about the tools peopleuse.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if,there was just one, one tool,
one platform that everyone usedand we didn't need to use any
other platforms.
And of course this is quite aseductive idea.
And of course this is whatMicrosoft and Salesforce and
very, in various other vendorstry to capitalize on.
I, I desire to just sort ofneatly compartmentalize, and
(11:33):
avoid the tool sprawl that thatoften occurs in organizations.
But of course, people havedifferent.
Varying needs and use cases andcontexts and accessibility needs
as well.
And so we often, you know, ofcourse we end up introducing
more and more different tools toget more and more various
(11:53):
different types of job donebecause if we standardize too
much, then we end up with a toolor device that doesn't really
work for anyone, but is equallybad for everyone.
And so that, you know, that'sone danger of standardizing.
Just in one context too, toofar.
The,
Teri Schmidt (12:12):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (12:12):
the challenge is that it's very difficult to know
it where if we're getting closeto that boundary, because we'll
know once we've gone past it,we'll get people complaining and
kicking off that, justifiablythe tools aren't fit for purpose
and they can't do their jobproperly
Teri Schmidt (12:28):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (12:28):
at, but at that point we've already passed that
boundary.
We're gonna have to rewind back.
And some of these, some of thesechanges are hard to, hard to
rewind.
So I would say one, of the best,you know, there's, there are
certain indicators, of headingtowards a state where we've
maybe over standardized, but alot of that is qualitative
feedback.
You know, talking to the peoplewho are, who are actually doing
(12:49):
the job
Teri Schmidt (12:50):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (12:51):
the sharp end.
Having those conversations, whatis it like to do your job on a
day-to-day basis and how is itchanging over time and trying to
map or trying to get an idea ofhow utilized people are, And how
heavily utilized people are anddo they have any slack at the
end of the week?
Do they have any capacity foradapting to.
This new, you know, a suddencompetitor in the market or a,
(13:14):
or shock like covid orrecession.
How do we have the capacity inthe system to suddenly adapt and
do something different?
Teri Schmidt (13:22):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, I mean, I, I don'tthink that's necessarily a
disappointing answer.
I think what I'm hearing youbring up there is that the main
thing you can do, or perhaps thefirst important step as a leader
is have an awareness that thereis a point.
Where optimization is no longera good thing or where
standardization is no longer agood thing, and be able to
(13:44):
recognize some of the risks thatcome along with that so that you
can ask those questions to yourpeople and have a sense of, of
what's going on.
Tom Geraghty (13:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And of course what happens in,in practice in many
organizations is that thatpendulum constantly swings one
way and the other.
Constantly trying to find that,that sweet spot.
And of course, that sweet spotalways moves because the whole,
the real world is, is everchanging.
And part, part of really thereason that pendulum swings one
way, the other is because.
Will get a leader, a new, a newleader will come in who's very
(14:15):
maybe efficiency driven and sortof optimization and all of this,
and cost benefits and stuff.
And, and we'll do loads ofthings to optimize and increase
efficiency.
Then, you know, at the end of atwo or three year tenure,
they'll be able to show their,or these are all the big changes
I've made.
This is all the money I'vesaved, and then they can walk
away and a new leader comes infinding.
Everything's grinding to a bitof a halt.
(14:36):
It's very, it's very efficient,but it's, it's not agile.
It's not, and, and there's a
Teri Schmidt (14:40):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (14:41):
and it's very brittle.
Teri Schmidt (14:43):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (14:43):
at that point we start to introduce new tools and
people start to do more, youknow, and there's when we might
see more innovation and moreadaptation and that's great.
And they, and they, because themetrics that we, particularly at
a leadership level, sometimesthe metrics that we measure
ourselves on, we sort ofchoosing ourselves almost.
Is, this is what I'm doing andthis is the impact that I'm
having.
And we sort of ignore the theother metrics that are maybe,
(15:05):
not looking, or maybe notmetrics, but outcomes that are
not doing so well in thebackground.
Teri Schmidt (15:10):
Right, right.
And you know, depending on howthe organization is structured
too, there can be a whole lotmore motivation for short term
results like you were talkingabout.
You know, I, did, you know,these 10 things and I saved the
company this much money and nowI'm ready to move on because I
know that my job is gonna changeevery three years or whatever is
(15:31):
set up in that organization.
You know, that motivation toachieve the short term results
as opposed to having that longerterm outcome view about how is
this lever I'm pulling going toaffect the longer
Tom Geraghty (15:44):
Yeah, yeah,
Teri Schmidt (15:46):
in thriving?
Tom Geraghty (15:46):
yeah.
And a cynical person, notnecessarily me, but a cynical
person might suggest that thereare even leaders who, you know,
come in, make a lot of changes.
I.
The in, in the full knowledge inthe short term.
They'll have some good bene, youknow, they'll, they'll show some
upticks in performance andmetrics in the short term and
everyone will clap'em on theback and then they get to leave
because they know in the longterm there's gonna be some pain
(16:08):
to pay.
But they're not gonna be aroundfor that one.
So they don't need to worryabout that.
Teri Schmidt (16:12):
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm just, I'm not, I'm notgetting this, this is going to
be an uplifting conversation atsome point, but my, my mind is
going to politics and governmentand everything, but we're, I'll,
we'll, we'll keep it businessfocused.
Definitely.
'Cause there, that might takemuch longer than we have for
(16:33):
this conversation.
So.
Tom Geraghty (16:35):
I, I see exactly where you're going with that.
Yeah.
Teri Schmidt (16:37):
yeah, definitely stay there.
So, you know, I think staying onthis topic, there was a, graph
that I saw on one of yournewsletters, focused on
utilization.
And it was, it was showing thekind of tipping point around 80%
utilization, where wait timesand stress kind of exploded.
I'd love to hear you talk alittle bit more about that for
(16:58):
people who haven't had theopportunity to see it, but also.
Talk about it in the light of,you know, leaders who have no
necessarily intuitive sense forwhen they're getting to that
tipping point.
You know, how can they designteam rhythms or decision making
that respect that limit evenwhen they are getting demands,
(17:20):
you know, coming in from allangles.
Tom Geraghty (17:22):
Yeah, so this is one of those, in fact, this is
one of those charts.
So this is a graph thatrepresents, a, a simplified
version of queuing theory andlittle's law and things like
that.
And it's really, it's afascinating graph and it's
probably, it's one of thosethings that I think should be
taught in sort of management 1 01 classes, but never is.
And, and it is because it'sfascinating and very visual.
(17:44):
Mathematically, demonstrable,case of, of how, how
utilization.
So it, it is a relationshipbetween wait, utilization and
wait time.
And it comes from initial workin telephone exchanges in 1920s
where there is a sweet spot formost teams and most functions.
And you can see where it comesfrom.
(18:06):
Telephone exchanges where.
We have a certain tolerance forthe amount of time we can wait
on someone else.
And this, this also depends onhow, how, integrated, how linked
together team members are andthings like that.
But essentially this graph showsthat as you begin to get above
sort of 80% utilization waittime begins to increase
exponentially.
And it's essentially becausewe're dividing.
(18:28):
The, time utilized by the timefree.
And so as you get higher, thatnumber goes exponentially high.
And so, you know, at at 80% it'slike the proxy is four minutes
but at 99% it's 99 minutes.
So if you've got a team thatworked very closely together,
let's say a tech team or anengineering team or product
(18:49):
team, then.
Things might be chugging alongnicely at sort of 75%
utilization, but then one morething comes in, tips'em into
85%, and suddenly everythingseems to have come to a
screeching halt because just toask Bob or Jane how to, you
know, access this APIdocumentation slows the task
down by an hour or two, whereasit used to only slow it down by
(19:13):
five minutes.
Teri Schmidt (19:14):
Yeah.
Tom Geraghty (19:15):
has a knock on effect on everyone else in the
team.
And everything comes fromscreeching halt.
And we see the same effect goingon in, emergency departments,
call centers and all, and allsorts of, all sorts of contexts.
And what's, what's reallypowerful about this, in fact,
the visual for this is sopowerful and easy to understand
for anyone managing teams.
Practice is somewhat moredifficult of course, because how
(19:37):
do we actually measureutilization?
And that's very contextual.
One, but this is actually whereGoogle's 20% time.
Do you know about Google's 20%
Teri Schmidt (19:48):
Mm-hmm.
I do.
Tom Geraghty (19:49):
And so this is the idea, and this is the almost
infamous idea that Google givetheir engineers or insist almost
that, that their engineers spend20% of their time on innovative,
interesting side projects andstuff.
And the, the outcome of of thisis some in really interesting
products and services, many ofwhich never see the light of
day, but some do.
(20:10):
And that's really powerful.
But the actual rationale forthis 20% time was not.
Innovation and let's make someextra cool things.
The rationale for it was to makesure that engineers spent 20% of
their time on interruptibletasks so that they were
available to the rest of theteam and they weren't committed
(20:30):
to, to certain work.
So you're always spending 20% ofyour time on stuff that, that
someone can, come over to youand say, oh, hey, hey Bob.
Hey Jane.
How do I get, how can you helpme with this thing?
Teri Schmidt (20:42):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (20:42):
where that idea comes from.
And we can build, you know, wedon't necessarily have to use
that exact same model, but wecan build that same concept into
our own, patterns and ways ofworking in our teams.
Teri Schmidt (20:52):
Yeah, I, actually never knew that, that that was
the original reason for that.
I, I heard you reference it inrelation to that, but I didn't
realize that was the rationalebehind it.
So it's introducing that, thatslack, as you said, into the
system so that it'sinterruptible time.
If we aren't Google, I mean,arguably any team could say, we
(21:15):
wanna use this time, you know,and say that we're using it for
innovation.
'cause that's probably morelikely to not be seen as lazy or
wasteful.
But what are, I'm just thinkingabout that leader out there
that's like, okay, I kind of getthis, you know, I've, I've read
the newsletter letters, whichobviously we'll link in the show
notes, but.
(21:37):
I just don't understand how Ican go to my boss or you know,
my peers that are wanting myteam to do something and say,
I'm sorry, we need some time.
That's interruptible.
Tom Geraghty (21:47):
Yeah.
Um, and, and so I do thinksometimes, and I, so I've
certainly managed teams anddepartments where we've had to
be a bit sneaky about thisbecause I.
Because, because people look atmetrics and people look at
metrics of utilization and stufflike that.
And that what they don't wannasee is, oh, well what are you
doing with, you've got, you'vegot 20% of your time free.
You could be working on this newproject or just, just, just add
(22:10):
this extra feature into yoursprint, or something like that.
So, so there are ways to, todraw in work that's valuable.
You know, we sort of talk aboutthis 20% time this, this slack
time.
And it might not be 20%, itmight be 30% or.
10% whatever suits the team.
But we need to build in someslack at least.
(22:31):
Otherwise, we're very brittle asa, as a team, as a unit, as a
system.
But that, that slack doesn'tmean just sort of sitting and
staring into space or.
Reading.
I mean, I was gonna say readingbooks.
Reading books.
It might be, reading booksbecause if your team is
particularly knowledge driven,and maybe that's a valuable way
to spend that 20% of your timereading research papers and
(22:53):
articles and books and stuff, orlistening to podcasts or
whatever.
So it might be that, but itmight also be that you've got
20% of your time actuallyallocated for maybe paying down
tech debt, maybe.
Maybe you even pre allocate acertain amount of time for
unplanned work.
And I used to use this approachquite a lot because a really
(23:13):
powerful way to measure one, onepowerful measure of work is
measuring planned versusunplanned work and the ratio
thereof, right?
So if, and almost moreinteresting than the ratio of it
is the trend in what directionis it?
Is the amount ofAnd work goingup or is it going down?
Teri Schmidt (23:30):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (23:32):
if it's going up, then we've got a system problem
that we need to address.
If it's going down, then that'sgreat.
We can keep that going.
Um, and depending on what thatratio is, we might want to
actually allocate some of ourtime because we know the
unplanned work.
We dunno what it's gonna be, butwe know there will be unplanned
work.
(23:52):
And so we, we allocate time forthat and then we can sort of.
Label it afterwards.
Teri Schmidt (23:58):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (23:58):
work always takes priority over planned work.
Teri Schmidt (24:01):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (24:02):
That's the nature of it.
And so by sort of getting infront of it and saying, okay,
well we're going to spend, we'regoing to allocate 20, let's say
25% of our time on unplannedwork, then we sort of get in
front of that problem and weactually over time, so we're
building in that slack, we'rebuilding in a capacity to adapt
and respond.
To these challenges as well ashopefully, having the capacity
(24:24):
to actually create systems andmake the changes so that that
volume of, of unplanned workgets less and less over time.
Teri Schmidt (24:32):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that that is atotally defensible way to do it
because it, shows that, youknow, you're being very
data-driven.
You're being very intentionalabout it.
I.
Imagine this looks different fordifferent organizations, but I'm
curious, you know, is that, sayyou had 20%, is that the same
time of day, the same day ofweek for everyone?
(24:53):
Or what's the
Tom Geraghty (24:54):
So is it.
Teri Schmidt (24:55):
way, or,
Tom Geraghty (24:56):
yeah, this is, and this, so this is a very key
point as well.
Actually, there's not a greatdeal of use.
I don't know, there's some use,but it's not as useful to have
everyone's 20% say on a Friday,because then everyone's
available to each other all atthe same time, but no one's
available to each other onMonday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
So what we want to do is somehowspread that out around.
(25:19):
So the, it's more like a fabricwithin the work.
And maybe, you know, maybesomeone's, so it is a general,
it increases the generalavailability in Slack throughout
the team throughout the timebecause yeah, it is if
everyone's free to each other ona Friday, then well, that's
nice, but, what happens whensomething goes wrong on a
Monday?
Teri Schmidt (25:40):
Exactly in, in a sense you're just shortening the
week.
And, you, you're still brittlefor those four days and,
Tom Geraghty (25:48):
Exactly.
Teri Schmidt (25:48):
and, you know, maybe, maybe a little bit more
flexible the other day, but thatdoesn't matter because you
haven't solved the problem ofbeing brittle and, and reducing
efficiency by that brittleness,if that's a word.
Tom Geraghty (26:02):
Yeah, yeah.
No, absolutely.
It is.
Because, that brittleness canlook like efficiency.
It can look like a finely tuned,highly optimized machine, which
is what it is.
But, but, but the most finelytuned, highly optimized machines
are also those that are mostvulnerable to, to risks and
changes and threats and bumps inthe road.
Teri Schmidt (26:21):
Yeah.
Right, right.
And I think it's fair to saythat those bumps in the road and
those threats and those risksare probably more likely than
ever, in the current times thatwe are living in.
Tom Geraghty (26:35):
Yes, yes, I absolutely agree.
You know, the more there's thisterm vuca, isn't it?
Volatile.
Uncertain, complex and ambiguousand, I'm not always a massive
fan of the term vuca, but I,think because we've always been
in complex, tricky, there was noperiod of history that has ever
been, oh, that was smoothsailing for a while.
(26:55):
You know, it's, it always, italways feels like a challenge
and it's always gonna becomplex.
But yeah, there are certainlyperiods of time where we need to
make sure that we, weintentionally.
Have some capacity to adapt andchange and respond to threats
and quite quickly as well.
And unfortunately, probably atthe moment now.
So, yeah, I would say now is thetime to build into in that slack
(27:18):
and that add adaptabilitybecause now is where we need it.
Maybe more so than, thanrecently, unfortunately.
Now is also the time wherethere's an awful lot of
pressure.
On leaders to be more efficient.
And so these are there's atension coming right back to
what we talked about at thestart.
There's a tension betweenefficiency and resilience and
they're pulling against eachother.
Teri Schmidt (27:36):
Yeah, yeah.
What advice would you have forleaders that are dealing with
this or you know, have you seenleaders who are effectively
handling this tension?
Tom Geraghty (27:46):
I think, yeah, so, and I think there are some
really good examples ofaddressing this in practice.
It's gonna look different forall sorts of different
organizations, but I like one,one good example is actually at
Netflix, the Chaos Monkey atNetflix, who sort of
intentionally tried to buildresilience into the system by
intentionally breaking it and,Having a system that that is
(28:09):
like, we know it's there, butit's unpredictable enough that
we don't know what it's gonnabreak.
And so it's sort of keepingteams on, and you wouldn't be
able to do that if you didn'thave the slack in the system.
If the teams were operating atfull capacity, the Chaos Monkey
would just break stuff and itwould just all over.
So that's Chaos Monkeys or thosesorts of mechanisms in
organizations, are really,really powerful.
(28:30):
We, in fact, I used to run ateam where we, every now and
then we would intentionally.
Lock someone out of of work forthe day and we, we, we would
give them some petty cash.
They get to spend the day out inthe out, go out for coffee, read
some books, go to the library,have a nice day.
It's sort of a bonus holiday.
And we'd get to work out whathappened in the organization
(28:51):
without them present.
Unplanned.
Like, because holiday's onething, you plan to go on
holiday.
You don't plan to simply notturn up one day.
So, that was a really powerfulway to.
Sort of examine what, whathappens without those, people
there.
But then there's, you know,there's loads of other things we
can do.
We need to, we need to, we needto foster psychological safety
in, in our team so that, peoplecan actually say to us, I'm at
(29:12):
capacity, or I'm over capacity.
Even that's, you know, that's avery hard thing to say to a boss
or manager.
Especially when there arepromotions on the on the line or
there are jobs on the line.
None of us want to be the personthat's saying, I'm at capacity,
or I'm over capacity and I needto do less.
That's a really difficultconversation to have.
(29:34):
But it's, but we need to be ableto have it because ultimately
it's putting the organizationrisk as well, not just them.
Teri Schmidt (29:39):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, that did.
You know, it brings up aexcellent point, and.
You know, ties back to our lastconversation and ties back to
all the work that you do with,with teams and organizations
around psychological safety.
Yeah, it's so, it's so truebecause even getting back to
those like engagement surveys wewere talking about for measure,
(30:00):
you know, as one of the solemeasures of resilience, it would
be so much more timely andeffective if the person feels
safe enough.
To just give you that input,that data, that feedback right
away, as opposed to waiting foran anonymous survey that they
may or may not complete.
Tom Geraghty (30:19):
yeah, yeah.
Exactly right.
And this is, this is part of therisk of those sorts of
infrequent check-ins and surveysand retros and things like that.
If we only run those retro,those surveys and things once
every six months or once everyyear.
Teri Schmidt (30:31):
Mm.
Tom Geraghty (30:31):
if something starts to go wrong a few weeks
after the last survey, you'renot gonna find out about it for
nearly a year.
There's, there's a lot of,that's a, that's a lot of time
for things to go sideways.
Teri Schmidt (30:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and as leaders, we can'tafford
Tom Geraghty (30:45):
no, no, no, exactly.
So we, need to create theconditions to where people can
tell us if something is wrong,straight away, even if something
isn't wrong yet, but they feellike.
This, we are heading in a baddirection.
There's something looming on thehorizon and we're, you know,
that that is a, that's a verystrong signal and we, and, and
even'cause we, and, and it'seasier to address because it's
(31:05):
easier to address it before itgoes wrong.
Right.
So, so those like tap intopeople's spidey sense of what's
going on in the teams andorganizations.
But that, yeah, that requires usto create the conditions and
make it safe for people to doso, and that they, they believe
there, there won't be a risk insome way if they do that.
Teri Schmidt (31:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I know you, you, youknow, teach multiple courses and
workshops on creating theseconditions, but I guess, you
know, in the short time that wehave remaining, if there is a
leader that's out there like, ohyeah, you know, I haven't heard,
I haven't thought about that.
I really need to be, hopefullythey've thought about it, but
(31:41):
they, I haven't thought aboutthe impact of.
Not having this slack time ofthe tension between efficiency
and resilience and because I'mworried about my job, I've just
been focusing on efficiency,efficiency, efficiency.
If you could give one or two.
Ways they could get started oncreating the safety they need on
(32:02):
their team so that people feelcomfortable even in that
environment and coming to themand saying that they're at
capacity.
What would that be?
Tom Geraghty (32:10):
I think so there's probably two.
I think there's two things.
Then I'm gonna try to make thesesort of a bit complimentary.
'cause one addresses,utilization, one addresses
psychological safety.
So what the utilization one is,I'd consider how you could apply
work in progress limits.
To your team.
So this is essentially a, acollective agreement amongst the
team is this is how much work wecan do in a given time, like a
(32:33):
week.
And we agree amongst each otherto not take on more than that.
And this, this applies at anindividual level and a, and a
and a team level, right?
So you might have like a teamof, you know, a, a team limit of
30 things and a, and anindividual, individual limit of
five things.
And we agree collectively to notgo above that.
And, that's a powerful thing todo because there's always a
(32:54):
pressure to, to, there's alwaysa pressure to do more.
There's always, we, evenunintentionally reward people
for doing more.
So set those firm limits andthey, they, those limits should
be co-created and agreed bypeople on the team.
And in terms of psychologicalsafety,'cause we, we require
psychological safety to havethat discussion about WIP work.
Teri Schmidt (33:12):
Uh
Tom Geraghty (33:14):
word gets tricky and psychological safety looks
different to everyone, butprobably the first thing to do
is consider the power gradientsin the team who's, and
particularly for, for a leader,you've got a lot of formal
power.
So there's,
Teri Schmidt (33:27):
mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (33:28):
power gradient there.
Steep power gradient areprobably the most, the thing
that most.
Damage.
Most damaged psychologicalsafety and most suppress voice.
So how can we lower, how can weflatten those power gradients?
And that might be informalpower, like who's most popular
or expert power, like who's themost expert or qualified or has
most years experience on theteam?
(33:49):
And having some discussionsabout those power gradients and
how to flatten them.
This might be as simple asmaking sure that when people
come together to haveconversations, they, they simply
introduce each other by.
Their names and what they do.
Like, hi, I'm Jane and I, andI'm doing anesthesia today, or
I'm, you know, in a, in adifferent context.
I'm Bob and I do ux, instead ofsaying like, hi, I'm Bob, I'm
(34:14):
chief level seven consultant,surgeon General.
And I'm Jane and I'msuperintendent, chief Warlock,
whatever it is.
And and you know, these are,because it's a lot easier to
simply speak up to Bob or Janethan it is to speak up.
Chief superintendent, consultantperson., So yeah, addressing
those power gradients and andcreating psychological safety
(34:36):
and having conversations abouthow much work can we actually
do, how much work is realistic.
Teri Schmidt (34:41):
yeah.
And and what I'm hearing in bothof those too is, is having the
conversation, raising theawareness around this is a
reality.
So you know, the reality is.
We want to be a resilient teamand we wanna be an efficient
team, but there is a place,there's a tipping point and we
want to, as a team, make surethat we are keeping an eye on
that.
(35:01):
So in that first conversation,and you know, the second
conversation, just having aconversation about power
gradients and Acknowledging thedifferent types of power
gradients that may be presentand having a conversation with
people about.
You know, what would it take forus as a team?
What norms do we need to put inplace so that that is minimized
as much as possible?
Tom Geraghty (35:23):
Yeah.
Amazing.
Yeah, exactly, exactly that.
So powerful.
Teri Schmidt (35:26):
Yeah.
Well, excellent.
Well, I always enjoy talkingwith you, Tom.
You're, you're welcome on thepodcast anytime.
For listeners, if you haven'tsubscribed to Tom's newsletter,
it will definitely be linked inthe show notes, and I highly
recommend it, every Friday.
I enjoy going into my inbox and,and seeing.
What thought provoking contentyou're putting out there.
(35:47):
So thank you for that.
Thank you for all the work thatyou do in organizations, and
thank you again for thisconversation.
Tom Geraghty (35:54):
Oh, thank you so much.
Well, thank you.
So yeah, thank you so much forhaving me on.
And, yeah, anytime I.
Love having these conversations.
It's such a pleasure to, to divedeep into some of these, into
some of these concepts.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you again.
As always, thank you forlistening.
If today's conversation got youthinking differently about how
you manage efficiency andresilience on your team, I
(36:17):
encourage you to pick one smallaction you can take this week to
build in just a little moreslack and see what changes.
Have a great week, and I'll talkto you again next week.
Have you ever found yourself wondering if
pushing your team for greaterefficiency might actually be
making it harder for them tohandle unexpected challenges?
I'm Terry Schmidt, your host andleadership coach at Strong
Leaders Serve, where I partnerwith caring driven leaders like
you who are under pressure todeliver results through others.
(00:22):
Leaders who can't afford to leadon autopilot or figure it out as
they go, because they need tobring the clarity and trust that
deliver real impact fast.
Today I am thrilled to welcomeback Tom Garrity, Founder and
CEO of Psych Safety.
If you caught our earlierconversation in episode 1 48
about boosting team performanceby reducing cognitive load
(00:45):
through psychological safety,you know, Tom brings a rare
combination of research depthand real world practicality.
In this episode, we're divinginto attention.
Every leader is feeling rightnow, balancing efficiency and
resilience.
So let's get started.
(01:06):
I.
(01:56):
Welcome back to the StrongLeaders Serve Podcast.
Tom, it's so nice to have youagain.
Tom Geraghty (02:00):
Oh, it's so good to be back.
Thank you so much.
Teri Schmidt (02:03):
Yeah.
And for those of you who haven'thad an opportunity to listen to
our last conversation, it was onepisode 1 48, a fascinating
conversation where we weretalking about cognitive load and
the relationship withpsychological safety and how you
can improve your teamperformance when you're thinking
about both of those.
so definitely it was aconversation that, was one of
the highlights of.
(02:24):
Of my time doing these guestinterviews.
So thank you for that.
And thank you again for comingback on.
I saw your newsletter talkingabout the tension between
efficiency and resilient, and Ithought that is a topic that the
compassionate driven leadersthat listen to this podcast are
probably dealing with.
'cause I know there's a lot ofpressure out there, so I'm happy
(02:48):
to have you on to talk about it.
Tom Geraghty (02:49):
I'm really excited to do so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, uh, it's, yeah, it's areally, really interesting
topic, so thank you.
Yeah.
Teri Schmidt (02:54):
Yeah, definitely.
Well, I'm curious, you know,just to start off, what piqued
your interest in this tensionbetween efficiency and
resilience?
And I'd love to hear, you know,if you have a story that you are
able to share about how you'vewitnessed that in the
organizations that you workwith.
Tom Geraghty (03:09):
Yeah, so I think, I think this is one of those
tensions that exists in, inalmost ev in, in, probably in
every organization, and I.
It's one of those things thatonce, once you see it, you can't
unsee it.
The, this constant drive, thisconstant pressure and
incentivization to be moreefficient, to be more lean, To,
(03:31):
you know, to reduce waste and,optimize everything, is probably
almost u ubiquitous across.
From tiny one to, to massivemultinationals and, and people
are rewarded and incentivized,and praised when.
Particularly managers andleaders when, when we make
something more efficient, whenwe, you know, and it sounds like
(03:52):
a great thing to do, right?
And it often is, efficiency isoften a good thing.
And, you know, by, reducingwaste and making things more
cost effective and things likethat, we, we get praise and we
get rewarded for doing so, butwe rarely get rewarded for
making things more resilientbecause resilience is so much
more difficult to measure.
It's so much more high, so muchmore difficult to put a number.
Teri Schmidt (04:14):
Yeah.
Tom Geraghty (04:14):
You know, we can measure efficiency in sort of
things per other thing, liketasks per minute or, you know,
widgets created per person orwhatever it is.
And that's easy to measure andwe can easily, you know, plot it
on a nice dashboard and a nicegraph and point to some impact
that we've had and, andsomething like that.
But it's much harder to measureresilience.
It's, it's much harder to.
(04:35):
to demonstrate what resiliencelooks like in practice, because
also resilience is often onlyseen in response to something
changing or some threat orchange happening.
And so we often only realizedthat we were not resilient after
the fact when it's a bit toolate to add it in.
And so I've seen this in, in allsorts of organizations.
(04:57):
So I think the first time I sawit in my career, so early on in
my career, I worked for a motor,a large motor retail group, and
there was a great deal ofpressure.
It was very metric driven, verynumbers driven, and there was a
great deal of pressure on, I.
On being efficient on, on sortof maximizing our output and
productivity per minute of theday and things like that.
(05:20):
And we were, we had lots ofsystems to record time sheets
and, and tasks done and, and allof this sort of stuff.
And it, and it all appeared likeon face of it, it all appeared
to hum along, but everyone wassort of maxed out and heavily
utilized and, and it only took aminor shock.
(05:41):
If you like, like a, to sendeverything sideways because
there was no, there was no adaptadaptive capacity in the system,
in the organization to respond.
When, when a, when a, you know,when a, when a competitor
launched a new product or did a,did a different thing, or
suddenly the market changes orwe have a bunch of people go off
sick and whenever anything likethat happened, everything went
(06:05):
absolutely sideways, reallyquickly.
And it was sort of at that.
It was through that experience,and it was very early on in my
career that I realized thatthere was a tension between
those things.
And it took, took me a long timeto articulate what I was trying
to, really trying to,understand.
Teri Schmidt (06:18):
Yeah.
Tom Geraghty (06:19):
But, but yeah, that, that was the first time I
saw it.
And I, and I've seen it in allsorts of firms since, and
consulting firms, which is whatI, I've got, you know, more
recent experience of working inlarge consulting firms.
Large consulting firms are anightmare for this because.
Teri Schmidt (06:33):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (06:34):
the people in a consulting firm are the billable
units.
And so we actually, you know,you'll hear about percentage
utilization and things like thatand constantly trying to up that
so that people are, people areutilized at 90 or a hundred
percent.
And of course, if someone'sutilized a hundred percent There
is no space left to even recoveror, or adapt to anything.
(06:56):
And, and, you know, you're,you're basically just planning
it's burnout as a, as anorganizational
Teri Schmidt (07:01):
Right.
That is so well put.
And so, Depressing, I guessyou'd say burnout as an
organizational strategy.
Um, but it is, it's, it is justdressed up probably in nicer
words than that.
But, and nicer charts and, andgraphs.
Um, but definitely is, that youbring up such a good point of,
(07:24):
you know, people being the unitsthere and, and looking at their
utilization.
Tom Geraghty (07:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And of course this is, you know,since, since you know Taylorism
and, and things like that,we've, we've, known, although we
haven't always behaved this way,but we've known that treating
people as machines as units ofproductivity alone is a, is a
route to failure.
It's a, it's a route to burnout,it's a route to, it's a route to
bad things happening.
It's a sh it, it can beeffective or at least, hmm.
(07:53):
It can achieve some results inthe short term, but it's not a
sustainable approach.
Teri Schmidt (07:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It can achieve the results wheneverything's going right and you
don't have that minor shock tothe system like you were talking
about.
And that can, I think, lullleaders into a false sense of
security as, as they're seeingthat'cause the me measurements
that, and metrics that they areaiming for are headed in the
right direction and those.
(08:20):
Silent metrics, the ones thatare a little bit harder to get
our handle on.
You know, even I think about howresilience is measured beyond
just after the fact.
And the closest thing I canthink to it is like, you know,
an annual engagement surveywhere, where people are asking
questions about wellbeing, andkind of assessing that, but.
(08:40):
That has its own problems initself and that it, you know,
isn't measured frequently.
It is self-reported.
It's, you know, so there,there's a lot of, a lot of
challenges there that don'tallow that to have the
credibility as the metricrelated to efficiency.
I.
Tom Geraghty (08:57):
yeah, yeah, definitely.
It's, because these things areoften, you know, they are
self-reported.
They have to be, they're only asaccurate as the safety that
people feel in being honest, I.
And of course they're, they'reonly as accurate as, as the
number of people that actuallyrespond.
And, and ironically, if ifwe're, if we're surveying an
entire organization, we're we'regetting answers from the people
(09:18):
who a love to fill out surveys.
You've got those people who justlove filling out surveys and
you've got the people who havethe time to fill out the survey.
So of course, the people who aremaxed out, burning out, super
utilized, they're not gonna sitand fill out a, an engagement
survey.
So we're not hearing from
Teri Schmidt (09:34):
right.
Yeah.
So true.
So true.
Oh, well, definitely.
Definitely some, issues to workthrough and, and problems to be
solved there.
So I'm glad we're having thisconversation.
so, you know, one, one thingthat comes up with efficiency
is.
Standardization.
And I'm not, I I went down arabbit hole in all of your
(09:57):
newsletters as I was, you know,looking into this topic.
So I'm not sure which one thiscame from, but you were talking
about the invisible cost ofstandardization.
and as you know, our audienceis, is full of compassionate
leaders and they care aboutwellbeing, but they also are
driven and care about results.
So.
They are probably looking atstandardization as a way to
(10:17):
optimize things as well.
And I'm curious from you, youknow, how can they tell when
they've optimized too far, whenthe efficiency is actually
undermining the team's capacityto adapt or recover.
Tom Geraghty (10:29):
I think this is really, this is a really good
question, and it's, and it'sprobably one of those with a,
with, an answer that is, ormaybe not with an answer, but,
but I, I don't know, I think I'mgonna disappoint everyone, but,
the, I think there's, so, yeah.
Just to come back to this ideaof standardization, I think.
The, the idea of standardizationsort of comes back to
manufacturing and, and relatedsort of sorts of industries
(10:52):
where we recognize that there'sa, there's a real power, a real
strength in standardization andmaking sure that we're using
sort of as few different partsand components and tools and
things as possible.
Right.
And it kind of makes sense.
But there's also a danger inthat, you know, and if so, if we
think about technology andorganizations, for example, if
(11:13):
we think about the tools peopleuse.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if,there was just one, one tool,
one platform that everyone usedand we didn't need to use any
other platforms.
And of course this is quite aseductive idea.
And of course this is whatMicrosoft and Salesforce and
very, in various other vendorstry to capitalize on.
I, I desire to just sort ofneatly compartmentalize, and
(11:33):
avoid the tool sprawl that thatoften occurs in organizations.
But of course, people havedifferent.
Varying needs and use cases andcontexts and accessibility needs
as well.
And so we often, you know, ofcourse we end up introducing
more and more different tools toget more and more various
(11:53):
different types of job donebecause if we standardize too
much, then we end up with a toolor device that doesn't really
work for anyone, but is equallybad for everyone.
And so that, you know, that'sone danger of standardizing.
Just in one context too, toofar.
The,
Teri Schmidt (12:12):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (12:12):
the challenge is that it's very difficult to know
it where if we're getting closeto that boundary, because we'll
know once we've gone past it,we'll get people complaining and
kicking off that, justifiablythe tools aren't fit for purpose
and they can't do their jobproperly
Teri Schmidt (12:28):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (12:28):
at, but at that point we've already passed that
boundary.
We're gonna have to rewind back.
And some of these, some of thesechanges are hard to, hard to
rewind.
So I would say one, of the best,you know, there's, there are
certain indicators, of headingtowards a state where we've
maybe over standardized, but alot of that is qualitative
feedback.
You know, talking to the peoplewho are, who are actually doing
(12:49):
the job
Teri Schmidt (12:50):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (12:51):
the sharp end.
Having those conversations, whatis it like to do your job on a
day-to-day basis and how is itchanging over time and trying to
map or trying to get an idea ofhow utilized people are, And how
heavily utilized people are anddo they have any slack at the
end of the week?
Do they have any capacity foradapting to.
This new, you know, a suddencompetitor in the market or a,
(13:14):
or shock like covid orrecession.
How do we have the capacity inthe system to suddenly adapt and
do something different?
Teri Schmidt (13:22):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, I mean, I, I don'tthink that's necessarily a
disappointing answer.
I think what I'm hearing youbring up there is that the main
thing you can do, or perhaps thefirst important step as a leader
is have an awareness that thereis a point.
Where optimization is no longera good thing or where
standardization is no longer agood thing, and be able to
(13:44):
recognize some of the risks thatcome along with that so that you
can ask those questions to yourpeople and have a sense of, of
what's going on.
Tom Geraghty (13:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And of course what happens in,in practice in many
organizations is that thatpendulum constantly swings one
way and the other.
Constantly trying to find that,that sweet spot.
And of course, that sweet spotalways moves because the whole,
the real world is, is everchanging.
And part, part of really thereason that pendulum swings one
way, the other is because.
Will get a leader, a new, a newleader will come in who's very
(14:15):
maybe efficiency driven and sortof optimization and all of this,
and cost benefits and stuff.
And, and we'll do loads ofthings to optimize and increase
efficiency.
Then, you know, at the end of atwo or three year tenure,
they'll be able to show their,or these are all the big changes
I've made.
This is all the money I'vesaved, and then they can walk
away and a new leader comes infinding.
Everything's grinding to a bitof a halt.
(14:36):
It's very, it's very efficient,but it's, it's not agile.
It's not, and, and there's a
Teri Schmidt (14:40):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (14:41):
and it's very brittle.
Teri Schmidt (14:43):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (14:43):
at that point we start to introduce new tools and
people start to do more, youknow, and there's when we might
see more innovation and moreadaptation and that's great.
And they, and they, because themetrics that we, particularly at
a leadership level, sometimesthe metrics that we measure
ourselves on, we sort ofchoosing ourselves almost.
Is, this is what I'm doing andthis is the impact that I'm
having.
And we sort of ignore the theother metrics that are maybe,
(15:05):
not looking, or maybe notmetrics, but outcomes that are
not doing so well in thebackground.
Teri Schmidt (15:10):
Right, right.
And you know, depending on howthe organization is structured
too, there can be a whole lotmore motivation for short term
results like you were talkingabout.
You know, I, did, you know,these 10 things and I saved the
company this much money and nowI'm ready to move on because I
know that my job is gonna changeevery three years or whatever is
(15:31):
set up in that organization.
You know, that motivation toachieve the short term results
as opposed to having that longerterm outcome view about how is
this lever I'm pulling going toaffect the longer
Tom Geraghty (15:44):
Yeah, yeah,
Teri Schmidt (15:46):
in thriving?
Tom Geraghty (15:46):
yeah.
And a cynical person, notnecessarily me, but a cynical
person might suggest that thereare even leaders who, you know,
come in, make a lot of changes.
I.
The in, in the full knowledge inthe short term.
They'll have some good bene, youknow, they'll, they'll show some
upticks in performance andmetrics in the short term and
everyone will clap'em on theback and then they get to leave
because they know in the longterm there's gonna be some pain
(16:08):
to pay.
But they're not gonna be aroundfor that one.
So they don't need to worryabout that.
Teri Schmidt (16:12):
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm just, I'm not, I'm notgetting this, this is going to
be an uplifting conversation atsome point, but my, my mind is
going to politics and governmentand everything, but we're, I'll,
we'll, we'll keep it businessfocused.
Definitely.
'Cause there, that might takemuch longer than we have for
(16:33):
this conversation.
So.
Tom Geraghty (16:35):
I, I see exactly where you're going with that.
Yeah.
Teri Schmidt (16:37):
yeah, definitely stay there.
So, you know, I think staying onthis topic, there was a, graph
that I saw on one of yournewsletters, focused on
utilization.
And it was, it was showing thekind of tipping point around 80%
utilization, where wait timesand stress kind of exploded.
I'd love to hear you talk alittle bit more about that for
(16:58):
people who haven't had theopportunity to see it, but also.
Talk about it in the light of,you know, leaders who have no
necessarily intuitive sense forwhen they're getting to that
tipping point.
You know, how can they designteam rhythms or decision making
that respect that limit evenwhen they are getting demands,
(17:20):
you know, coming in from allangles.
Tom Geraghty (17:22):
Yeah, so this is one of those, in fact, this is
one of those charts.
So this is a graph thatrepresents, a, a simplified
version of queuing theory andlittle's law and things like
that.
And it's really, it's afascinating graph and it's
probably, it's one of thosethings that I think should be
taught in sort of management 1 01 classes, but never is.
And, and it is because it'sfascinating and very visual.
(17:44):
Mathematically, demonstrable,case of, of how, how
utilization.
So it, it is a relationshipbetween wait, utilization and
wait time.
And it comes from initial workin telephone exchanges in 1920s
where there is a sweet spot formost teams and most functions.
And you can see where it comesfrom.
(18:06):
Telephone exchanges where.
We have a certain tolerance forthe amount of time we can wait
on someone else.
And this, this also depends onhow, how, integrated, how linked
together team members are andthings like that.
But essentially this graph showsthat as you begin to get above
sort of 80% utilization waittime begins to increase
exponentially.
And it's essentially becausewe're dividing.
(18:28):
The, time utilized by the timefree.
And so as you get higher, thatnumber goes exponentially high.
And so, you know, at at 80% it'slike the proxy is four minutes
but at 99% it's 99 minutes.
So if you've got a team thatworked very closely together,
let's say a tech team or anengineering team or product
(18:49):
team, then.
Things might be chugging alongnicely at sort of 75%
utilization, but then one morething comes in, tips'em into
85%, and suddenly everythingseems to have come to a
screeching halt because just toask Bob or Jane how to, you
know, access this APIdocumentation slows the task
down by an hour or two, whereasit used to only slow it down by
(19:13):
five minutes.
Teri Schmidt (19:14):
Yeah.
Tom Geraghty (19:15):
has a knock on effect on everyone else in the
team.
And everything comes fromscreeching halt.
And we see the same effect goingon in, emergency departments,
call centers and all, and allsorts of, all sorts of contexts.
And what's, what's reallypowerful about this, in fact,
the visual for this is sopowerful and easy to understand
for anyone managing teams.
Practice is somewhat moredifficult of course, because how
(19:37):
do we actually measureutilization?
And that's very contextual.
One, but this is actually whereGoogle's 20% time.
Do you know about Google's 20%
Teri Schmidt (19:48):
Mm-hmm.
I do.
Tom Geraghty (19:49):
And so this is the idea, and this is the almost
infamous idea that Google givetheir engineers or insist almost
that, that their engineers spend20% of their time on innovative,
interesting side projects andstuff.
And the, the outcome of of thisis some in really interesting
products and services, many ofwhich never see the light of
day, but some do.
(20:10):
And that's really powerful.
But the actual rationale forthis 20% time was not.
Innovation and let's make someextra cool things.
The rationale for it was to makesure that engineers spent 20% of
their time on interruptibletasks so that they were
available to the rest of theteam and they weren't committed
(20:30):
to, to certain work.
So you're always spending 20% ofyour time on stuff that, that
someone can, come over to youand say, oh, hey, hey Bob.
Hey Jane.
How do I get, how can you helpme with this thing?
Teri Schmidt (20:42):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (20:42):
where that idea comes from.
And we can build, you know, wedon't necessarily have to use
that exact same model, but wecan build that same concept into
our own, patterns and ways ofworking in our teams.
Teri Schmidt (20:52):
Yeah, I, actually never knew that, that that was
the original reason for that.
I, I heard you reference it inrelation to that, but I didn't
realize that was the rationalebehind it.
So it's introducing that, thatslack, as you said, into the
system so that it'sinterruptible time.
If we aren't Google, I mean,arguably any team could say, we
(21:15):
wanna use this time, you know,and say that we're using it for
innovation.
'cause that's probably morelikely to not be seen as lazy or
wasteful.
But what are, I'm just thinkingabout that leader out there
that's like, okay, I kind of getthis, you know, I've, I've read
the newsletter letters, whichobviously we'll link in the show
notes, but.
(21:37):
I just don't understand how Ican go to my boss or you know,
my peers that are wanting myteam to do something and say,
I'm sorry, we need some time.
That's interruptible.
Tom Geraghty (21:47):
Yeah.
Um, and, and so I do thinksometimes, and I, so I've
certainly managed teams anddepartments where we've had to
be a bit sneaky about thisbecause I.
Because, because people look atmetrics and people look at
metrics of utilization and stufflike that.
And that what they don't wannasee is, oh, well what are you
doing with, you've got, you'vegot 20% of your time free.
You could be working on this newproject or just, just, just add
(22:10):
this extra feature into yoursprint, or something like that.
So, so there are ways to, todraw in work that's valuable.
You know, we sort of talk aboutthis 20% time this, this slack
time.
And it might not be 20%, itmight be 30% or.
10% whatever suits the team.
But we need to build in someslack at least.
(22:31):
Otherwise, we're very brittle asa, as a team, as a unit, as a
system.
But that, that slack doesn'tmean just sort of sitting and
staring into space or.
Reading.
I mean, I was gonna say readingbooks.
Reading books.
It might be, reading booksbecause if your team is
particularly knowledge driven,and maybe that's a valuable way
to spend that 20% of your timereading research papers and
(22:53):
articles and books and stuff, orlistening to podcasts or
whatever.
So it might be that, but itmight also be that you've got
20% of your time actuallyallocated for maybe paying down
tech debt, maybe.
Maybe you even pre allocate acertain amount of time for
unplanned work.
And I used to use this approachquite a lot because a really
(23:13):
powerful way to measure one, onepowerful measure of work is
measuring planned versusunplanned work and the ratio
thereof, right?
So if, and almost moreinteresting than the ratio of it
is the trend in what directionis it?
Is the amount ofAnd work goingup or is it going down?
Teri Schmidt (23:30):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (23:32):
if it's going up, then we've got a system problem
that we need to address.
If it's going down, then that'sgreat.
We can keep that going.
Um, and depending on what thatratio is, we might want to
actually allocate some of ourtime because we know the
unplanned work.
We dunno what it's gonna be, butwe know there will be unplanned
work.
(23:52):
And so we, we allocate time forthat and then we can sort of.
Label it afterwards.
Teri Schmidt (23:58):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (23:58):
work always takes priority over planned work.
Teri Schmidt (24:01):
Mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (24:02):
That's the nature of it.
And so by sort of getting infront of it and saying, okay,
well we're going to spend, we'regoing to allocate 20, let's say
25% of our time on unplannedwork, then we sort of get in
front of that problem and weactually over time, so we're
building in that slack, we'rebuilding in a capacity to adapt
and respond.
To these challenges as well ashopefully, having the capacity
(24:24):
to actually create systems andmake the changes so that that
volume of, of unplanned workgets less and less over time.
Teri Schmidt (24:32):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that that is atotally defensible way to do it
because it, shows that, youknow, you're being very
data-driven.
You're being very intentionalabout it.
I.
Imagine this looks different fordifferent organizations, but I'm
curious, you know, is that, sayyou had 20%, is that the same
time of day, the same day ofweek for everyone?
(24:53):
Or what's the
Tom Geraghty (24:54):
So is it.
Teri Schmidt (24:55):
way, or,
Tom Geraghty (24:56):
yeah, this is, and this, so this is a very key
point as well.
Actually, there's not a greatdeal of use.
I don't know, there's some use,but it's not as useful to have
everyone's 20% say on a Friday,because then everyone's
available to each other all atthe same time, but no one's
available to each other onMonday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
So what we want to do is somehowspread that out around.
(25:19):
So the, it's more like a fabricwithin the work.
And maybe, you know, maybesomeone's, so it is a general,
it increases the generalavailability in Slack throughout
the team throughout the timebecause yeah, it is if
everyone's free to each other ona Friday, then well, that's
nice, but, what happens whensomething goes wrong on a
Monday?
Teri Schmidt (25:40):
Exactly in, in a sense you're just shortening the
week.
And, you, you're still brittlefor those four days and,
Tom Geraghty (25:48):
Exactly.
Teri Schmidt (25:48):
and, you know, maybe, maybe a little bit more
flexible the other day, but thatdoesn't matter because you
haven't solved the problem ofbeing brittle and, and reducing
efficiency by that brittleness,if that's a word.
Tom Geraghty (26:02):
Yeah, yeah.
No, absolutely.
It is.
Because, that brittleness canlook like efficiency.
It can look like a finely tuned,highly optimized machine, which
is what it is.
But, but, but the most finelytuned, highly optimized machines
are also those that are mostvulnerable to, to risks and
changes and threats and bumps inthe road.
Teri Schmidt (26:21):
Yeah.
Right, right.
And I think it's fair to saythat those bumps in the road and
those threats and those risksare probably more likely than
ever, in the current times thatwe are living in.
Tom Geraghty (26:35):
Yes, yes, I absolutely agree.
You know, the more there's thisterm vuca, isn't it?
Volatile.
Uncertain, complex and ambiguousand, I'm not always a massive
fan of the term vuca, but I,think because we've always been
in complex, tricky, there was noperiod of history that has ever
been, oh, that was smoothsailing for a while.
(26:55):
You know, it's, it always, italways feels like a challenge
and it's always gonna becomplex.
But yeah, there are certainlyperiods of time where we need to
make sure that we, weintentionally.
Have some capacity to adapt andchange and respond to threats
and quite quickly as well.
And unfortunately, probably atthe moment now.
So, yeah, I would say now is thetime to build into in that slack
(27:18):
and that add adaptabilitybecause now is where we need it.
Maybe more so than, thanrecently, unfortunately.
Now is also the time wherethere's an awful lot of
pressure.
On leaders to be more efficient.
And so these are there's atension coming right back to
what we talked about at thestart.
There's a tension betweenefficiency and resilience and
they're pulling against eachother.
Teri Schmidt (27:36):
Yeah, yeah.
What advice would you have forleaders that are dealing with
this or you know, have you seenleaders who are effectively
handling this tension?
Tom Geraghty (27:46):
I think, yeah, so, and I think there are some
really good examples ofaddressing this in practice.
It's gonna look different forall sorts of different
organizations, but I like one,one good example is actually at
Netflix, the Chaos Monkey atNetflix, who sort of
intentionally tried to buildresilience into the system by
intentionally breaking it and,Having a system that that is
(28:09):
like, we know it's there, butit's unpredictable enough that
we don't know what it's gonnabreak.
And so it's sort of keepingteams on, and you wouldn't be
able to do that if you didn'thave the slack in the system.
If the teams were operating atfull capacity, the Chaos Monkey
would just break stuff and itwould just all over.
So that's Chaos Monkeys or thosesorts of mechanisms in
organizations, are really,really powerful.
(28:30):
We, in fact, I used to run ateam where we, every now and
then we would intentionally.
Lock someone out of of work forthe day and we, we, we would
give them some petty cash.
They get to spend the day out inthe out, go out for coffee, read
some books, go to the library,have a nice day.
It's sort of a bonus holiday.
And we'd get to work out whathappened in the organization
(28:51):
without them present.
Unplanned.
Like, because holiday's onething, you plan to go on
holiday.
You don't plan to simply notturn up one day.
So, that was a really powerfulway to.
Sort of examine what, whathappens without those, people
there.
But then there's, you know,there's loads of other things we
can do.
We need to, we need to, we needto foster psychological safety
in, in our team so that, peoplecan actually say to us, I'm at
(29:12):
capacity, or I'm over capacity.
Even that's, you know, that's avery hard thing to say to a boss
or manager.
Especially when there arepromotions on the on the line or
there are jobs on the line.
None of us want to be the personthat's saying, I'm at capacity,
or I'm over capacity and I needto do less.
That's a really difficultconversation to have.
(29:34):
But it's, but we need to be ableto have it because ultimately
it's putting the organizationrisk as well, not just them.
Teri Schmidt (29:39):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, that did.
You know, it brings up aexcellent point, and.
You know, ties back to our lastconversation and ties back to
all the work that you do with,with teams and organizations
around psychological safety.
Yeah, it's so, it's so truebecause even getting back to
those like engagement surveys wewere talking about for measure,
(30:00):
you know, as one of the solemeasures of resilience, it would
be so much more timely andeffective if the person feels
safe enough.
To just give you that input,that data, that feedback right
away, as opposed to waiting foran anonymous survey that they
may or may not complete.
Tom Geraghty (30:19):
yeah, yeah.
Exactly right.
And this is, this is part of therisk of those sorts of
infrequent check-ins and surveysand retros and things like that.
If we only run those retro,those surveys and things once
every six months or once everyyear.
Teri Schmidt (30:31):
Mm.
Tom Geraghty (30:31):
if something starts to go wrong a few weeks
after the last survey, you'renot gonna find out about it for
nearly a year.
There's, there's a lot of,that's a, that's a lot of time
for things to go sideways.
Teri Schmidt (30:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and as leaders, we can'tafford
Tom Geraghty (30:45):
no, no, no, exactly.
So we, need to create theconditions to where people can
tell us if something is wrong,straight away, even if something
isn't wrong yet, but they feellike.
This, we are heading in a baddirection.
There's something looming on thehorizon and we're, you know,
that that is a, that's a verystrong signal and we, and, and
even'cause we, and, and it'seasier to address because it's
(31:05):
easier to address it before itgoes wrong.
Right.
So, so those like tap intopeople's spidey sense of what's
going on in the teams andorganizations.
But that, yeah, that requires usto create the conditions and
make it safe for people to doso, and that they, they believe
there, there won't be a risk insome way if they do that.
Teri Schmidt (31:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I know you, you, youknow, teach multiple courses and
workshops on creating theseconditions, but I guess, you
know, in the short time that wehave remaining, if there is a
leader that's out there like, ohyeah, you know, I haven't heard,
I haven't thought about that.
I really need to be, hopefullythey've thought about it, but
(31:41):
they, I haven't thought aboutthe impact of.
Not having this slack time ofthe tension between efficiency
and resilience and because I'mworried about my job, I've just
been focusing on efficiency,efficiency, efficiency.
If you could give one or two.
Ways they could get started oncreating the safety they need on
(32:02):
their team so that people feelcomfortable even in that
environment and coming to themand saying that they're at
capacity.
What would that be?
Tom Geraghty (32:10):
I think so there's probably two.
I think there's two things.
Then I'm gonna try to make thesesort of a bit complimentary.
'cause one addresses,utilization, one addresses
psychological safety.
So what the utilization one is,I'd consider how you could apply
work in progress limits.
To your team.
So this is essentially a, acollective agreement amongst the
team is this is how much work wecan do in a given time, like a
(32:33):
week.
And we agree amongst each otherto not take on more than that.
And this, this applies at anindividual level and a, and a
and a team level, right?
So you might have like a teamof, you know, a, a team limit of
30 things and a, and anindividual, individual limit of
five things.
And we agree collectively to notgo above that.
And, that's a powerful thing todo because there's always a
(32:54):
pressure to, to, there's alwaysa pressure to do more.
There's always, we, evenunintentionally reward people
for doing more.
So set those firm limits andthey, they, those limits should
be co-created and agreed bypeople on the team.
And in terms of psychologicalsafety,'cause we, we require
psychological safety to havethat discussion about WIP work.
Teri Schmidt (33:12):
Uh
Tom Geraghty (33:14):
word gets tricky and psychological safety looks
different to everyone, butprobably the first thing to do
is consider the power gradientsin the team who's, and
particularly for, for a leader,you've got a lot of formal
power.
So there's,
Teri Schmidt (33:27):
mm-hmm.
Tom Geraghty (33:28):
power gradient there.
Steep power gradient areprobably the most, the thing
that most.
Damage.
Most damaged psychologicalsafety and most suppress voice.
So how can we lower, how can weflatten those power gradients?
And that might be informalpower, like who's most popular
or expert power, like who's themost expert or qualified or has
most years experience on theteam?
(33:49):
And having some discussionsabout those power gradients and
how to flatten them.
This might be as simple asmaking sure that when people
come together to haveconversations, they, they simply
introduce each other by.
Their names and what they do.
Like, hi, I'm Jane and I, andI'm doing anesthesia today, or
I'm, you know, in a, in adifferent context.
I'm Bob and I do ux, instead ofsaying like, hi, I'm Bob, I'm
(34:14):
chief level seven consultant,surgeon General.
And I'm Jane and I'msuperintendent, chief Warlock,
whatever it is.
And and you know, these are,because it's a lot easier to
simply speak up to Bob or Janethan it is to speak up.
Chief superintendent, consultantperson., So yeah, addressing
those power gradients and andcreating psychological safety
(34:36):
and having conversations abouthow much work can we actually
do, how much work is realistic.
Teri Schmidt (34:41):
yeah.
And and what I'm hearing in bothof those too is, is having the
conversation, raising theawareness around this is a
reality.
So you know, the reality is.
We want to be a resilient teamand we wanna be an efficient
team, but there is a place,there's a tipping point and we
want to, as a team, make surethat we are keeping an eye on
that.
(35:01):
So in that first conversation,and you know, the second
conversation, just having aconversation about power
gradients and Acknowledging thedifferent types of power
gradients that may be presentand having a conversation with
people about.
You know, what would it take forus as a team?
What norms do we need to put inplace so that that is minimized
as much as possible?
Tom Geraghty (35:23):
Yeah.
Amazing.
Yeah, exactly, exactly that.
So powerful.
Teri Schmidt (35:26):
Yeah.
Well, excellent.
Well, I always enjoy talkingwith you, Tom.
You're, you're welcome on thepodcast anytime.
For listeners, if you haven'tsubscribed to Tom's newsletter,
it will definitely be linked inthe show notes, and I highly
recommend it, every Friday.
I enjoy going into my inbox and,and seeing.
What thought provoking contentyou're putting out there.
(35:47):
So thank you for that.
Thank you for all the work thatyou do in organizations, and
thank you again for thisconversation.
Tom Geraghty (35:54):
Oh, thank you so much.
Well, thank you.
So yeah, thank you so much forhaving me on.
And, yeah, anytime I.
Love having these conversations.
It's such a pleasure to, to divedeep into some of these, into
some of these concepts.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you again.
As always, thank you forlistening.
If today's conversation got youthinking differently about how
you manage efficiency andresilience on your team, I
(36:17):
encourage you to pick one smallaction you can take this week to
build in just a little moreslack and see what changes.
Have a great week, and I'll talkto you again next week.
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