Stop Initiative Overload

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2018

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rose Hollister and Michael Watkins, consultants at Genesis Advisers, argue that many companies today are taking on too many initiatives. Each manager might have their own pet projects they want to focus on, but that trickles down to lower level workers dealing with more projects at a time that they can handle, or do well. This episode also offers practical tips for senior-level leaders to truly prioritize the best initiatives at their company — or risk losing some of their top talent. Hollister and Watkins are the authors of the HBR article "Too Many Projects." with. They are the authors of "Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone it's Kurt we need your help with our annual survey this is your last chance to help us get to know you so we can make idea cast even better for you
0:09.8	it's easy just go to HBR.org
0:13.0	podcast survey.
0:15.0	Again, that's HBR.org.
0:17.0	And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. Launching a new initiative is one way a manager can make their mark in a new job or show their value at a
0:54.2	company they've been at for years. So it makes sense that more and more managers
0:58.5	across industries might be piling on more and more new projects. The downside though is that more and more work
1:04.7	get saddled on middle managers and frontline employees. Workers are getting
1:08.6	overwhelmed. When you have large organizations and lots of different people wanting to make things happen.
1:16.4	The ripple effect all the way down is where it simply becomes almost impossible to keep up and with all good intentions.
1:25.0	People want to support these initiatives.
1:27.0	They're great ideas.
1:28.0	There's simply too many to be able to support to the right level.
1:31.0	That's Rose Hollister. She and Michael Watkins looked at how
1:35.2	companies like a Fortune 500 retailer ultimately suffer from overloading their
1:39.8	employees like this. They're the co-authors of the HBR article Too Many Projects
1:44.8	and both consultants at Genesis Advisors.
1:47.0	Rose and Michael, thank you for joining us today.
1:50.0	Great to be here.
1:51.0	Thank you. Happy to be here.
1:52.0	Happy to be here. Thank you. Happy to be here.
1:53.0	So has initiative overload always been a problem?
	...

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