182. Efficiency vs. Resilience -Tom Geraghty

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

About Tom:

Tom Geraghty is a recognised authority in creating safer, high-performing, and more inclusive workplaces, and Founder and CEO of Psych Safety, a company dedicated to fostering safety cultures and psychological safety.

Tom’s interdisciplinary background in ecological research and technology positions him uniquely in this field: beginning his career as an Experimentalist at Jealott’s Hill for Syngenta, he transitioned to technology, occupying CIO/CTO roles across various sectors, from innovative tech startups to established global finance firms. Tom is now an award-winning Psychological Safety consultant and researcher for multinational corporations, healthcare organisations, academia, government, and more.

Holding a degree in Ecology, an MBA, and a Masters in Global Health and Humanitarianism, Tom merges academic knowledge with real-world experience. His focus lies in leveraging the transformative power of psychological safety, which stems from his understanding and experience of organisational dynamics and the complexity of workplace environments. His mission is to make the world of work a safer, higher performing, more inclusive and equitable place.

Outside of work, Tom spends as much time as possible outdoors, mountain biking, hiking and travelling, and is a father to a wonderful young daughter.

Transcript

Teri Schmidt [00:00:00]:

Have you ever found yourself wondering if pushing your team for greater efficiency might actually be making it harder for them to handle unexpected challenges? I'm Terri Schmidt, your host and leadership coach at Strong Leaders Serve, where I partner with caring, driven leaders like you who are under pressure to deliver results through others. Leaders who can't afford to lead on autopilot or figure it out as they go because they need to bring the clarity and trust that deliver real impact fast. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome back Tom Garrity, founder and CEO of SYKESafety. If you caught our earlier conversation in episode one forty eight about boosting team performance by reducing cognitive load through psychological safety, you know Tom brings a rare combination of research depth and real world practicality. In this episode, we're diving into attention every leader is feeling right now, balancing efficiency and resilience. So let's get started. What does strong leaders serve mean to you? It speaks powerfully to the paradoxes that I think are going to be required for the next fifty to a hundred years in organizational life?

Tom Geraghty [00:01:17]:

We're content. We're comfortable in our skin. And we desire to contribute to the whole.

Teri Schmidt [00:01:24]:

Strength comes in the, unleashing of others' talent, potential, and well-being and happiness.

Tom Geraghty [00:01:33]:

I think a strong serving leader, a strong leader period, is thinking about what's best for the group. Serve my people by building them up, by producing the next generation of leaders. How do I give more to my people than I take?

Teri Schmidt [00:01:56]:

Welcome back to the Strong Leaders Serve podcast, Tom. It's so nice to have you again.

Tom Geraghty [00:02:00]:

Oh, it's so good to be back. Thank you so much.

Teri Schmidt [00:02:03]:

Yeah. And for those of you who haven't had an opportunity to listen to our last conversation, it was on episode one forty eight, a fascinating conversation where we were talking about cognitive load and the relationship with psychological safety and how you can improve your team performance when you're thinking about both of those. So, definitely, it was a conversation that was one of the highlights of of my time doing these guest interviews. So thank you for that, and thank you again for coming back on. I saw your newsletter talking about the tension between efficiency and resilient, and I thought that is a topic that the compassionate driven leaders that listen to this podcast are probably dealing with because I know there's a lot of pressure out there. So I'm happy to have you on to talk about it.

Tom Geraghty [00:02:49]:

I'm really excited to do so. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's a really, really interesting topic. So thank you. Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:02:54]:

Yeah. Definitely. Well, I'm curious. You know, just to start off, what piqued your interest in this tension between 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've witnessed that in the organizations that you work with.

Tom Geraghty [00:03:09]:

Yeah. So I think I think this is one of those tensions that exists in in almost every in in probably in every organization. And it's one of those things that once once you see it, you can't unsee it. Yeah. The this constant drive, this constant pressure and incentivization to be more efficient, to be more lean, to to reduce waste and optimize everything, probably almost ubiquitous across every organization from tiny ones to to massive multinationals. And and people are rewarded and incentivized and praised when particularly managers and leaders, when when we make something more efficient, when we you know? And it sounds like a great thing to do. Right? And it often is. Efficiency is often a good thing.

Tom Geraghty [00:03:56]:

And, you know, by reducing waste and making things more cost effective and things like that, we we get praise and we get rewarded for doing so. But we rarely get rewarded for making things more resilient because resilience is so much more difficult to measure. It's so much more higher so much more difficult to put a number on. We can Yeah. Yeah. We can measure efficiency instead of things per other thing, like tasks per minute or, you know, widgets created per person or whatever it is. And that's easy to measure. And we can easily, you know, plot it on a nice dashboard and a nice graph and Okay.

Tom Geraghty [00:04:27]:

Point to some impact that we've had. And and so, like, yeah. But it's much harder to measure resilience. It's it's much harder to to demonstrate what resilience looks like in practice because also resilience is often only seen in response to something changing or some threat or change No. You're right. Happening. And so we often only Okay. Realize that we were not resilient after the fact when it's a bit too late to add it in.

Tom Geraghty [00:04:55]:

And so I've seen this in in all sorts of organizations. So I think the first time I saw it 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 of pressure. It was very metric driven, very numbers driven, and there was a great deal of pressure on on being efficient and and maximizing our output and productivity per minute of the day and things like that. And we were we had lots of systems to record time sheets and and tasks done and and all of this sort of stuff. And it and it all appeared like, on the face of it, it all appeared to along, but everyone was sort of maxed out and heavily utilized. And and only took a minor shock, if you like, like a a to send everything sideways because there was no I am. There was no adapt adaptive 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 didn't did a different thing, or suddenly the market changes, or we have a bunch of people go off sick. And

Teri Schmidt [00:06:02]:

Mhmm.

Tom Geraghty [00:06:02]:

Whenever anything like that happened, everything went absolutely sideways really quickly. And it was sort of at that it was through that experience, and it was very early on in my career that I realized that there was a tension between those things. And it took took me a long time to articulate what I was trying to really trying to understand. Yeah. But but, yeah, that that was the first time I saw it, and I and I've seen it in all sorts of firms since. And consulting firms, which is what I I've got, you know, more recent experience working in large consulting firms. Large consulting firms are a nightmare for this because no. Because the people in a consulting firm are the billable units.

Tom Geraghty [00:06:38]:

And so we actually you know, you'll hear about percentage utilization and things like that and constantly trying to up that so that people are people are utilized at 90 or a %. And of course, if someone's utilized a %, there is no space left to even recover or or adapt to anything. And and, you know, you're you're basically just planning. It's burnout as a as an organizational strategy.

Teri Schmidt [00:07:01]:

Right. That is so well put and so depressing. I guess you'd say burnout is an organizational strategy. But it is. It's it's just dressed up probably in nicer words than that, but and nicer charts and and graphs. But definitely is that you bring up such a good point of, you know, people being the units there and and looking at their utilization. Mhmm.

Tom Geraghty [00:07:30]:

Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, this is Yeah. Yeah. 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 of productivity 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 it it it can be effective or at least, it can achieve some results in the short term Mhmm.

Tom Geraghty [00:07:58]:

But it's not a

Teri Schmidt [00:07:59]:

sustainable approach. Yeah. Yeah. It can achieve the results when everything's going right. Yeah. And you don't have that minor shock to the system like you were talking about. And that can, I think, lull leaders into a false sense of security

Tom Geraghty [00:08:10]:

Yes?

Teri Schmidt [00:08:10]:

As as they are saying that. Because the measurements that and metrics that they are aiming for are headed in the right direction. And those silent metrics, the ones that are a little bit harder to get our handle on, you know, even I think about how resilience is measured beyond just after the fact. And the closest thing I can think to it is, like, you know, an annual engagement survey where where people are asking questions about well-being and kind of assessing that, but that has its own problems in itself 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't allow that to have the credibility as the metric related to efficiency.

Tom Geraghty [00:08:57]:

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. It's because these things are often you know, they are self reported. They have to be. They're only as accurate as the safety that people feel in being honest. Mhmm. And, of course, they're they're only as accurate as as the number of people that actually respond.

Tom Geraghty [00:09:12]:

And and, ironically, if if we're if we're surveying an entire organization, we're we're getting answers from the people who, hey, love to fill out surveys. You've got the you've got those people who just love filling out surveys. And you've got the people who have the time to fill out the survey. So, of course, the people who are maxed out, burning out, super utilized, they're not gonna sit and fill out an engagement survey. So we're not hearing from those people.

Teri Schmidt [00:09:35]:

Yeah. So true. So true. Oh, well, definitely definitely some issues to work through and and problems to be solved there. So I'm glad we're having this conversation. So, you know, one one thing that comes up with the efficiency is standardization. Yeah. And I'm not I I went down a rabbit hole in all of your newsletters as I was, you know, looking into this topic, so I'm not sure which one this came from.

Teri Schmidt [00:10:01]:

But you were talking about the invisible cost of standardization. And as you know, our audience is is full of compassionate leaders, and they care about well-being, but they also are driven and care about results. So they are probably looking at standardization as a way to optimize things as well. And I'm curious from you. You know, how can they tell when they've optimized too far, when the efficiency is actually undermining the team's capacity to adapt or recover? I

Tom Geraghty [00:10:29]:

think this is a really it's a really good question, and it's and it's probably one of those with a with an answer that is or maybe not with an answer, but but so I I don't know. I think I'm gonna disappoint everyone. But then you I think there's so, yeah, just to come back to this idea of standardization, I think the the idea of standardization sort of comes back to manufacturing and and related sort of sort of industries where we recognize that there's a there's a real power, a real strength in standardization and making sure that we're using Mhmm. Sort of as few different parts and components and tools and things as possible. Right? And it kinda makes sense. But there's also a danger in that, you know, and if so if we think about technology and organizations, for example, if we think about the tools people use, wouldn't it be wonderful if there was just one one tool, one platform that everyone used, and we didn't need to use any other platforms? And, of course, this is quite a seductive idea, and, of course, this is what Microsoft and and Salesforce and very and various other vendors try to capitalize on that. Our desire to just sort of neatly compartmentalize and avoid the tool sprawl that that assumption occurs in organizations. But, of course, people have different and varying needs and use cases and context and accessibility can need as well.

Tom Geraghty [00:11:47]:

And so we often you know, of course, we end up introducing more and more different tools to get more and more various different types of job done. Because if you standardize too much, then we end up with a tool or a device that doesn't really work for anyone, but is equally bad for everyone. And so that, you know, that's one danger of standardizing just in one context, sort of too too far.

Teri Schmidt [00:12:11]:

The Mhmm. Mhmm.

Tom Geraghty [00:12:12]:

The the challenge is that it's very difficult to know where if we're getting close to that boundary. Because we'll know once we've gone past it, we'll get people complaining and kicking off the, justifiably, the tools aren't fit for purpose, and they can't do their job properly. I know. But at that point, we've already passed that boundary. We're gonna have to rewind back. And some of these some of these changes are hard to hard to rewind. So I would say one of the best, you know, there's there are certain indicators of heading towards a state where we've maybe overstandardized, but a lot of that is qualitative feedback. You know, talking to the people who are who are actually doing the job at the sharp end, having those conversations.

Tom Geraghty [00:12:53]:

What is it like to do your job on a day to day basis, and how is it changing over time? And trying to map or trying to get an idea of how utilized people are. Mhmm. How heavily utilized. And do they have any slack at the end of the week? Do they have any capacity for adapting to this new, you know, a a a certain competitor in the market or a or shock like COVID or or recession? How do we have the capacity in the system to suddenly adapt and do something different?

Teri Schmidt [00:13:22]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I mean, I I don't think that's necessarily a disappointing answer. I think what I'm hearing you bring up there is that the main thing you can do or perhaps the first important step as a leader is have an awareness that there is a point where optimization is no longer a good thing or where standardization is no longer a good thing and be able to recognize some of the risks that come along with that so that you can ask those questions Yeah. To your people and have a sense of of what's going on.

Tom Geraghty [00:13:53]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, what happens in in practice in many organizations is that that pendulums constantly swings one way and the other, constantly trying to find that that sweet spot. And, of course, that sweet spot always moves because the whole the real world is is ever changing. And part part of reason the reason that pendulum swings one way or the other is because we'll get a leader. A new a new leader will come in who's very, maybe, efficiency driven and sort of optimization and all of this and cost benefits and stuff. And and we'll do loads of things to optimize and increase efficiency.

Tom Geraghty [00:14:25]:

Then, you know, at the end of a two or three year tenure, they'll be able to show you there. Well, these are all the big changes I've made. This is all the money I've saved, and then they can walk away. And a new leader comes in finding evidence grinding through a bit of a halt. It's very it's very efficient, but it's it's not agile. It's not and and there's a lot of Uh-huh. And it's very brittle. And Well, nice.

Tom Geraghty [00:14:43]:

When we start to introduce new tools and people start to do more, you know, and there's when we might see more innovation and more adaptation, and that's great. And we and they and they because the metrics that we, particularly at a leadership level, sometimes the metrics that we measure ourselves on we we sort of choose them ourselves almost. This is this is this is what I'm doing, and this is the impact that I'm having. And we sort of ignore the the other metrics that are maybe not looking or maybe not metrics, but outcomes that are not doing so well in the background.

Teri Schmidt [00:15:10]:

Right. Right. And, you know, depending on how the organization is structured too, there can be a whole lot more motivation for short term results like you were talking about. You know, I did, you know, these 10 things, and I saved the company this much money. And now I'm ready to move on because I know that my job is gonna change every three years or whatever

Tom Geraghty [00:15:31]:

Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:15:31]:

Is set up in that organization. You know, that motivation to achieve the short term results as opposed to having that longer term outcome view Yeah. About how is this lever I'm pulling going to affect the longer term Yeah. Success and thriving.

Tom Geraghty [00:15:47]:

Yeah. And a cynical person, not necessarily me, but a cynical person might suggest that there are even leaders who, you know, come in, make a lot of changes that in in the full knowledge, in the short term, they'll have some good you know, they'll they'll show some upticks in performance and metrics in the short term, and everyone will clap them on the back. And then they get to leave because they know in the long term, there's gonna be some pain to pay, but they're not gonna be around for that one. So they don't need to worry about that. Right.

Teri Schmidt [00:16:12]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I'm just thinking on that. I'm not getting this is going to be an uplifting conversation at some point. My mind is going to politics and government and everything, but we're out. We'll keep that business focused.

Teri Schmidt [00:16:28]:

Yes. Definitely. Because there, that might take much longer than we have for this conversation. Yes.

Tom Geraghty [00:16:35]:

I see exactly where you're going with that. Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:16:37]:

Yeah. Definitely stay there. So, you know, I think staying on this topic, there was a graph that I saw on one of your newsletters focused on utilization, and it was it was showing the kinda tipping point around 80% utilization where wait times and stress kind of exploded. Mhmm. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that for people who haven't had the opportunity to see it, but also talk about it in the light of, you know, leaders who have no necessarily intuitive sense for when they're getting to that tipping point. You know, how can they design team rhythms or decision making that respect that limit even when they are getting demands, you know, coming in from all angles?

Tom Geraghty [00:17:22]:

Yeah. So this is one of those in fact, this is one of those charts. So this is a graph that represents a simplified version of queuing theory and Little's Law and things like that. And it's really it's a fascinating graph, and it's probably it's one of those things that I think should be taught in sort of management one zero one classes, but never is. And and it is because it's a fascinating and very visual and mathematically demonstrable case of of how how utilization so it's a relationship between utilization and wait time, and it comes from initial work in telephone exchanges in nineteen twenties where there is a sweet spot for most teams and most functions, and you can see where it comes from telephone exchanges, where we have a certain tolerance for the amount of time we can wait on someone else. And this this also depends on how how integrated, how linked together team members are and things like that. But, essentially, this graph shows that as you begin to get above sort of 80 utilization, wait time begins to increase exponentially. And it's essentially because we're dividing the time utilized by the time free.

Tom Geraghty [00:18:31]:

And so as you get higher Mhmm. That number goes exponentially high. And so, you know, at at 80%, it's like the the proxy is four minutes, but at 99, it's ninety nine minutes. So if you've got a team that work very closely together, let's say a tech team or an engineering team or product team, then things might be chugging along nicely as of 75% utilization. But then one more thing comes in and tips them into 85%, and suddenly everything seems to have come to a screeching halt because just to ask Bob or Jane how to, you know, access this API documentation slows a task down by an hour or two, whereas it used to only slow it down by five minutes. And that then has a knock on effect on everyone else in the team, and everything comes to a screeching halt. And we see the same effect going on in emergency departments, call centers, and on and all sorts of all sorts of contexts. And what's what's really powerful about this, in in fact, the visual for this is so powerful and easy to understand for anyone managing teams.

Tom Geraghty [00:19:34]:

Putting it into practice is somewhat more difficult, of course, because how do we actually measure utilization? And that's very contextual. One but this is actually where Google's twenty percent time do you know about Google's twenty percent time?

Teri Schmidt [00:19:48]:

I do.

Tom Geraghty [00:19:49]:

And so this is the idea, and this is the almost infamous idea that Google give their engineers or insist almost that their engineers spend 20% of their time on innovative, interesting side projects and stuff. And

Teri Schmidt [00:20:03]:

Mhmm.

Tom Geraghty [00:20:03]:

The the outcome of of this is some intere really interesting products and services, many of which never see the light of day, but some do. And that's really powerful.

Teri Schmidt [00:20:11]:

Again

Tom Geraghty [00:20:11]:

But the actual rationale for this 20% time was not innovation and let's make some extra cool things. The rationale for it was to make sure that engineers spend 20% of their time on interruptible tasks so that they were available to the rest of the team, and they weren't committed to to certain work. So you're always spending 20% of your time on stuff that that someone can also come over to you and say, oh, hey. Hey, Bob. Hey, Jane.

Teri Schmidt [00:20:38]:

Yeah.

Tom Geraghty [00:20:38]:

How do I get how can you help me with this thing? So Mhmm. That's where the idea comes from. And we can build you know, we don't necessarily have to use that exact same model, but we can build that same concept into our own patterns and ways of working in our teams.

Teri Schmidt [00:20:52]:

Yeah. Yeah. I actually never knew that that that was the original reason for that. I I heard you reference it in relation to that, but I didn't realize that was the rationale behind it. So it's introducing that that Slack, as you said, into the system so that it's interruptible time. If we aren't Google, I mean, arguably, any team could say we wanna use this time, you know, and say that we're using it for innovation because that's probably more likely to not be seen as lazy or waste full.

Tom Geraghty [00:21:25]:

Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:21:26]:

But what are I'm just thinking about that leader out there that's like, okay. I kinda get this. You know? I've I've read the newsletter letters, which obviously we'll link in the show notes, but I just don't understand how I can go to my boss or, you know, my peers that are wanting my team to do something and say, I'm sorry. We need some time that's interruptible.

Tom Geraghty [00:21:48]:

Yeah. And and so I do think sometimes and also I've certainly managed teams and departments where we've had to be a bit sneaky about this because because because people look at metrics, and people look at metrics of utilization and stuff like that. And then what they don't wanna see is, oh, well, what are you doing with you've got you've got 20% of your time free. You could be working on this new project or just just just add this extra feature into your sprint or something like that. So so there are ways to to draw in work that's valuable. You know, we sort of talk about this 20% time, this this Slack time. And it might not be 20%. It might be 30% or or 10%, whatever suits the team.

Tom Geraghty [00:22:29]:

But we need to build in some Slack at least. Otherwise, we're very brittle as a as a team, as a unit, as a system. But that that slack doesn't mean just sort of sitting and staring into space or reading I mean, I was gonna say reading books. Reading books, it might be reading books because if your team is particularly knowledge driven, and maybe that's a valuable way to spend that 20% of your time reading research papers and articles and books and stuff or listening to podcasts or whatever. So it might be that, but it might also be that you've got 20% of your time actually allocated for maybe paying down tech debt. Maybe maybe you even preallocate a certain amount of time for unplanned work. And I used to use this approach quite a lot because a really powerful way to measure one one powerful measure of work is measuring planned versus unplanned work and the ratio thereof. Right? So if and almost more interesting than the ratio of it is the trend in what direction is it? Is the amount of an end work going up, or is it going down?

Teri Schmidt [00:23:30]:

Yes.

Tom Geraghty [00:23:31]:

And Mhmm. If it's going up, then we've got a system problem that we need to address. If it's going down, then that's great. We can keep that going. And depending on what that ratio is, we might want to actually allocate some of our time because we know the unplanned work. We don't know what it's gonna be, but we know there will be unplanned work. And so we we allocate time for that, and then we can sort of label it afterwards.

Teri Schmidt [00:23:57]:

Mhmm.

Tom Geraghty [00:23:58]:

Because unplanned work always takes priority over planned work. We we that's the nature of it. And so by sort of getting in front of it and saying, okay. Well, we're going to spend we're going to allocate 20 let's say, 25% of our time on unplanned work, then we sort of get in front of that problem. And we actually, over time, we're building in that slack. We're building in in the capacity to adapt and respond to these challenges as well as, hopefully, having the capacity to actually create systems and make the changes so that that volume of of unplanned work gets less and less over time.

Teri Schmidt [00:24:32]:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that is a totally defensible way to do it because it shows that, you know, you're being very data driven and you're being very intentional about it. I imagine this looks different for different organizations, but I'm curious, you know, is that say you had 20%. Is that the same time of day, the same day of week for everyone, or what's the best way you work?

Tom Geraghty [00:24:56]:

Yeah. This is and this so this is a very key point as well, actually. There's not a great deal 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 at the same time, but no one's available to each other on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. So what we want to do is somehow spread that out around so that it's more like a fabric within the work, And maybe, you know, maybe someone's so it's a general it increases the general availability in Slack throughout the team throughout the time because, yeah, it's if everyone's free to each other on a Friday, then, well, that's nice. But what happens when something goes wrong on a Monday?

Teri Schmidt [00:25:39]:

Yeah. Exactly. In in a sense, you're just shortening the week. Yeah. And you you're still brittle for those four days.

Tom Geraghty [00:25:47]:

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Teri Schmidt [00:25:48]:

And, you know, maybe maybe a little bit more flexible the other day, but that doesn't matter because you haven't solved the problem of being brittle and and reducing efficiency by that brittleness

Tom Geraghty [00:26:01]:

Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:26:01]:

If that's a word.

Tom Geraghty [00:26:02]:

Yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. It is. Because that brittleness can look like efficiency. It can look like a finely tuned, highly optimized machine, which is what it is. But but but the most finely tuned, highly optimized machines are also those that are most vulnerable to to risks and changes and threats, bumps in the road.

Teri Schmidt [00:26:22]:

Yeah. Right. Right. And I think it's fair to say that those bumps in the road and those threats and those risks are probably more likely than ever in the current times that we are living in.

Tom Geraghty [00:26:35]:

Yes. Yes. It it great. You know, the more there's this term VUCA, isn't it? It's a volatile and certain complex and ambiguous. And I'm not always a massive fan of the term VUCA, but I think because we've always been in complex, tricky there was no period of history that has ever been, oh, that was smooth sailing for a while. It's it always it always feels like a challenge, and it's always gonna be complex. But, yeah, there are certainly periods of time where we need to make sure that we we intentionally have some capacity to adapt and change and respond to threats and quite quickly as well. And unfortunately, probably at the moment, now so, yeah, I would say now is the time to build into in that Slack and that add adaptability because now is where we need it, maybe more so than than recently.

Tom Geraghty [00:27:23]:

Unfortunately, now is also the time where there's an awful lot of pressure on leaders Yeah. To be more efficient. And so there's a there's a tension coming right back to what we talked about. It's that there's a tension between efficiency and resilience, and they're pulling against each other.

Teri Schmidt [00:27:36]:

Yeah. Yeah. What advice would you have for leaders that are dealing with this, or, you know, have you seen leaders who are effectively handling this tension?

Tom Geraghty [00:27:46]:

I think yeah. So and I think there are some really good examples of addressing this in practice. It's gonna look different for all sorts of different organizations. But, like, one one good example is actually Netflix, the chaos monkey at Netflix, who sort of intentionally tried to build resilience into the system by intentionally breaking it and having a system that that is like, we know it's there, but it's unpredictable enough that we don't know what is gonna break. And so it's sort of keeping teams on and you wouldn't be able to do that if you didn't have the slack in the system. If the teams were operating at full capacity, the keris monkey would just break stuff, and it would just Mhmm. All over.

Teri Schmidt [00:28:24]:

Mhmm.

Tom Geraghty [00:28:24]:

So that's keris monkeys or those sorts of mechanisms in organizations are really, really powerful. In fact, I used to run a team where we, every now and then, we would intentionally lock someone out of of work for the day. And we we we'd give them some petty cash. They'd get to spend the day out in the go out for coffee, read some books, go to the library, have a nice day, sort of a bonus holiday, and we'd get to work out what happened in the organization without them present unplanned. Like Yeah. Because holiday is one thing. You plan to go on holiday. You don't plan to simply not turn up one day.

Tom Geraghty [00:28:58]:

So that was a really powerful way to to examine what what happens 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 need to foster psychological safety in in our team so that people can actually say to us, I'm at capacity or I'm overcapacity even. That's, you know, that's a very hard thing to say to a boss or manager, especially when there are promotions on on the line or there are jobs on the line. None of us want to be the person that's saying, I'm at capacity or I'm overcapacity, and I need to do less. That's a really difficult conversation to have, but it's but we need to be able to have it because ultimately, it's put in the organization as well, not just

Teri Schmidt [00:29:38]:

They're here. You're here. Yeah. Yeah. That did you know, it brings up a excellent point and, you know, ties back to our last conversation 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 true because even getting back to those, like, engagement surveys we were talking about for measure, you know, as one of the sole measures of resilience, it would be so much more timely and effective if the person feels safe enough to just give you that input, that data

Tom Geraghty [00:30:12]:

Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:30:13]:

That feedback right away Yeah. As opposed to waiting for an anonymous survey that they may or may not complete.

Tom Geraghty [00:30:19]:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right. And this is this is part of the risk of those sorts of infrequent check ins and surveys and retros and things like that. If we only run those ret those surveys and things once every six months or once every year, And If something starts to go wrong a few weeks after the last survey, you're not gonna find out about it for nearly a year. There's there's a lot of that's a that's a long time for things to go sideways.

Teri Schmidt [00:30:41]:

Yeah. Yeah. And and as leaders, we can't afford that.

Tom Geraghty [00:30:46]:

No. No. No. Exactly. So we need to create a condition to where people can tell us if something is wrong straight away. Even if something isn't wrong yet, but they feel like this we're heading in a bad direction. There's something looming on the horizon, and we're you know? That that is a that's a very strong signal. And we and and even because we and it's easier to address because it's easier to address it before it goes wrong.

Tom Geraghty [00:31:06]:

Right? So so those like, tap into people's spidey sense of what's going on in the teams and organizations. But that yeah. That requires us to create the conditions and make it safe for people to do so, and they they believe there there won't be a risk in some way if they do that.

Teri Schmidt [00:31:21]:

Yeah. Yeah. And I know you you you know, I teach multiple courses and workshops on creating these conditions, but I guess, you know, in the short time that we have remaining, if there is a leader that's out there, like, oh, yeah. You know, I haven't hurt I haven't thought about that I really need to be. Hopefully, they've thought about it. But they I haven't thought about the impact of not having this Slack time of the tension between efficiency and resilience. And because I'm worried about my job, I've just been focusing on efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.

Tom Geraghty [00:31:56]:

Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:31:56]:

If you could give one or two ways they could get started on creating the safety they need on their team so that people feel comfortable even in that environment and coming to them and saying that they're at capacity? What would that be?

Tom Geraghty [00:32:10]:

I think so there's probably two I think there's two things in. I'm gonna try to make these a bit complicated. One addresses utilization, one addresses psychological safety. So what the utilization one is that you consider how you could apply work in progress limits to your team. So this is essentially a a collective agreement amongst the team as this is how much work we can do in a given time, like a week. And we agree amongst each other to not take on more than that. And And this this applies at an individual level and a and a and a team level. Right? So you might have, like, a team of yeah.

Tom Geraghty [00:32:44]:

A team limit of 30 things and a and an individual individual limit of five things. And we agree collectively to not go above that, and that's a powerful thing to do because there's always a pressure to to to there's always a pressure to pay more. There's always we even unintentionally reward people for doing more. So set those firm limits, and they they those limits should be cocreated and agreed by people on the team. And in terms of psychological safety, because we we require psychological safety to have that discussion about WIP working for WIP limits. And this way gets tricky, and psychological safety looks different to everyone. But probably the first thing to do is consider the power gradients in the team, whose and particularly for for a leader, you've got a lot of formal power. So there's there's a steep power gradient there.

Tom Geraghty [00:33:29]:

Steep power gradients are probably the most the thing that most damage most damage psychological safety and most suppressed Mhmm. Voice. So how can we lower how can we flatten those power gradients? And that might be informal power, like who's most popular or expert power, like who's the most expert or qualified or has the most years experience on the team. And having some discussions about those power gradients and how to flatten them, this might be as simple as making sure that when people come together to have conversations, they they simply introduce each other by their names and what they do. Like, hi. I'm Jane and I, and I'm doing anesthesia today, or I'm, you know, in a in a different context, I'm Bob, and I do UX. Instead of saying like, hi. I'm Bob.

Tom Geraghty [00:34:13]:

I'm chief level seven consultant surgeon general, and I'm Jane, and I'm superintendent chief warlock, whatever it is. And, and, you know, these are because it's a lot easier to simply speak up to Bob or Jane than it is to speak chief superintendent consultant person. So, yeah, addressing those power gradients and and creating psychological safety and having conversations about how much work can we actually do, how much work is really Yeah.

Teri Schmidt [00:34:41]:

Yeah. And and what I'm hearing in both of those too is is having the conversation, raising the awareness around this is a reality. So, you know, the reality is we want to be a resilient team, and we wanna be an efficient team, but there is a place, there's a tipping point, and we want to, as a team, make sure that we are keeping an eye on that. Yeah. So in that first conversation you know, the second conversation, just having a conversation about power gradients and acknowledging the different types of power gradients that may be present and having a conversation with people about, you know, what would it take for us as a team? What norms do we need to put in place so that that is minimized as much as possible?

Tom Geraghty [00:35:23]:

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly that. So powerful.

Teri Schmidt [00:35:26]:

Yeah. Well, excellent. Well, I always enjoy talking with you, Tom. You're you're welcome on the podcast anytime. For listeners, if you haven't subscribed to Tom's newsletter, it will definitely be linked in the show notes, and I highly recommend it. Every Friday, I enjoy going into my inbox and and seeing what thought provoking content you're putting out there. So thank you for that.

Tom Geraghty [00:35:49]:

Thank you.

Teri Schmidt [00:35:49]:

Thank you for all the work that you do in organizations, and thank you again for this conversation.

Tom Geraghty [00:35:55]:

Oh, thank you so much. Well, thank you so yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. And, yeah, anytime. I always love having these conversations. It's such a pleasure to to dive deep into some of these into some of these concepts. So yeah. Yeah.

Tom Geraghty [00:36:06]:

Thank you again.

Teri Schmidt [00:36:08]:

As always, thank you for listening. If today's conversation got you thinking differently about how you manage efficiency and resilience on your team, I encourage you to pick one small action you can take this week to build in just a little more slack and see what changes. Have a great week, and I'll talk to you again next week.