Episode 21: You Can't Pour From An Empty Cup; rethinking capacity

Kate McCaffrey: Hi, and welcome back to Twisting Paradigms in Real Life. In this solo episode, I want to talk about one of the conditions that's part of my momentum system. And some of this has also come from the middle manager's best practices project that I facilitated this year, which I'm excited to share with you all. And I think part of what we think about is that. Capacity is one of those things. It's one of the major components of being able to do things, right? And get things done. And so when we think about this, we think about is if we add things to the list and nothing's come off, all we have done is added hope and a prayer that we'll be able to get it done. And if the work is getting done. We make the assumption that we must have the capacity. And so when we think about this idea of busy and full and capacity, I was prepping for some group sessions coming up and reviewing some from some others that I did this summer, and thinking about how people want to be different and what they're willing to commit to. Eight out of ten. when I looked at two separate groups, had capacity as one of the action items that they want to commit to to try and do better with. So I want to share a little bit about why this is important and why it matters. And when we think about this, you know, it's about how do we consider our own capacity as we think about others' capacity around us. And sometimes people are like, well, what do you mean about capacity? So I want to get into that a little bit too. So picture a launch plan. We're all in the stages of sort of ending a calendar year and thinking about the next, and many people are doing strategic planning processes or finalizing priorities for the next year. And we have clear milestones, we have the owners, we have a timeline that anyone would be excited about and proud about. And it was built, let's say, for a team of eight, but the team is now five. Someone got sick, someone else left. Someone else got moved to a new position. So nobody has said that the plan's wrong. It was approved months ago, back when it was true. And it's been quietly carried forward ever since, oftentimes without anybody saying anything. And the people holding it know the math doesn't work. Having been a leader of many strategic planning processes or tasks force or working groups, I know this really well. It's hard to do your job when you're also leading a group of people towards some initiative or goal. So, one of the things that I haven't been able to stop thinking about is if you add a priority recently and nothing has come off the list, where does it go? And how does it get consumed? And I think that one of the things that we make assumptions is about is we have some high performers. We have people who are dedicated and committed to the work that we're doing. And if you've Been around for a while, that we're on this journey around momentum. I talk about the conditions of clarity, capacity, alignment, and trust. And clarity asks: do people know what matters? Capacity asks, do people actually have what it takes to act on it? And that's where the time, the skills, and the energy comes in. And here's the assumption I want to twist today. If the work is getting done, we must have the capacity. Feels reasonable, even flattering. Our team is delivering, so we must be okay. But getting it done and being able to sustain it are two very different things. Teams are remarkably good at absorbing. They stay late, they skip the break, they quietly stop doing the thinking work in order to get things done. And the output keeps showing up. They may be getting things done on time or close to on time when you need them. But we see this as output as proof of capacity. And when it might really be that they're just absorbing and thinking about how much they're absorbing. In the survey and the project that I did this year, I looked at 46 middle managers filled out a survey for me. Some of the themes that came from getting the questions in the survey were from conversations I've been having with senior leaders and middle managers for the past five years or more. What was stunning to me is that only a quarter, 24%, say that they've had protected time for strategic thinking. So if I'm at a director level or AVP level and I have a team of people and I don't have time for strategic thinking, how can I help them have that time to dream, to vision, to understand what's happening in a bigger picture? And these are capable, committed people. They're not lacking skill or will. They're working inside these conditions that leave no room for the part of the job that moves things forward. And they're doing that on their own time. They're not taking lunch, they're staying late, or they're bringing a laptop home, and they're working after kids go to bed and after dinner. And so thinking about this, I want it to be something that isn't more pressure, right? So how do we separate out these words of busy and full? And think about them as busy describing a pace. And honestly, most good teams run busy. We should be busy, right? That's what we get paid to do. We're busy. A product launch, a start of a semester, a middle of a semester, a big event that we may have. Busy can even feel energizing. And there's room in there to recover. Full is something else. Full means there's no room left to absorb anything new. without something else giving away. And here's what I think makes this tricky. From the outside, you can't tell them apart. A team can look frantic and still have room. And a team can look calm, even cheerful, and be completely full because they've learned that looking calm is part of the job. Now don't get me wrong, I actually teach steadiness and practice it myself. And I think that is similar to calm. But those two states have very different leadership responses. If a team is busy, you may protect their pace and say thank you. And if a team is full, thank you is not enough. Something else needs to go. So I'll invite you to ask yourself one question this week. Is my team busy or is my team full? And then ask yourself, how do you actually know? So when I say capacity, I said I'd give you some ideas about what that means because oftentimes I see it and hear it and people ask me, well, what do you mean by that? Or what is it? It means, it's not just about the hours. The time is just a piece of it. And I think of it as three things. So the first is is time, capacity, the hours and the attention that we have available to be able to focus on something. Not on paper or on a calendar, but in real life. After the meetings, after the interruptions and the urgent requests that arrives at 445. The second is skill capacity, which we could think about as capability. And this one often gets missed. And I think part of it is because we may have open time, but we still may not have the know-how or the resources we need to learn how to do this differently. And so we hand over a new system, a new audience, a new policy, a new responsibility, and we see an open calendar and we call it capacity. And sometimes learning takes time, we know that, but how are we opening up opportunities to have time to learn in new and different ways or have time to be innovative? And the third is energy capacity. What a team can sustain emotionally when the pressure doesn't let up. And so when we think about having the hours and the skills, and we still have people running on fumes, that's an energy issue. When we think about the hardest thing that we can see. And sometimes it's the slowest thing to come back because our bodies, if we're in that environment, are trained to just keep going. And I think this matters because when we treat these three as one thing, capacity, we approve work that looks possible, but may not be. The hours exist, so we say yes, but the skills aren't there yet, or the energy isn't there yet. Or hasn't been there. And the plan quietly falls away for a reason nobody named. And I've been caught in that place where progress didn't get made in a timely way and had to backpaddle to get it done, knowing that there wasn't energy and that there was an emotional load that went with the project. And so when we think about if our teams are full. Full, why don't we just say no? Or why don't they have that permission internally to say no? And I've watched some people professionally have those boundaries and be able to say no. And I used to often tell my team: don't watch me because I'm not good at it. You got to figure this out. And I'm not sure that was helpful, although at the time it's the best that I had, given what I was dealing with. So if we think about what it costs to say we're full, it can often feel like weakness or that we're admitting some type of fault or weakness. And it can sound like we're resistant. We don't want to. And if the answer has always been, well, we have to make it work. Do more with less. Fill the role because they left suddenly without backfilling the role that we have. So people just absorb it quietly. And the leader sees a team that said yes. But that silence isn't necessarily agreement. A yes given in an environment where no one feels unsafe. Tells you very little. A yes given in an environment where no one feels unsafe tells you very little. And I think part of it is I never felt like I could say anything. I was the doer. I was the getting things done. I was the one that brought people together from a relationship standpoint. And I think at some times I didn't have the energy or capacity. I often had outside projects that I was doing as well, whether it was developing coursework, trainings, doing my own coursework when I was doing my PhD, while I was working full-time. And I think that there's an opportunity when we think about who's doing this. And what I've come to believe is that being capable of carrying the load doesn't mean the load is sustainable. So what do we do? I want to give you one practice that I think can help, and it's a small one on purpose. So when we say yes to something, or we're asking someone to say yes to something, what are we trading for that in that approval process? And how are we saying that out loud so that something comes off the plate or that we're slowing down or we're putting pause on something? And so, how do we do that before? The conversation ends that has asked us to go ahead and do this new thing. That one question can change the conversation. It can be as simple as we're saying yes to this. What are we saying no or not yet to? And I think the no or not yet is really that one of the twists there, because not yet doesn't mean no never. It just means let's pause on this. And so what if there's nothing? I've also had people who've told me that. Well, there's nothing I can stop doing. That's useful. And the honest question then becomes, well, what are we willing to resource differently, decide, or delay? And then how do we say that in the context of if the answer is nothing, then we haven't added a priority. We've added a hope. And here's the sess here's the second half, especially if you're a middle manager listening to this. Approvers, senior leaders can't weigh a trade they can't see. So make capacity visible. One simple view. What's committed, what's at risk, and what a new request could displace. And it moves the conversation conversation from can you fit this in to what should this replace? And that's a far better question. And it's one your senior leaders usually want to be asked. And your middle managers really need to be able to get in the habit of asking themselves versus just saying yes and doing it and absorbing it or just saying yes and then complaining about it and being negative about it. And then we have some retention challenges and showing up challenges. So let's go back to the launch plan we talked about. The plan for eight held by five. The people holding it aren't failing. They're doing exactly what capable, committed people do when the conditions around them haven't caught up. They just absorb it. And that's the invitation of this whole conversation about momentum. Pressure doesn't create the problem, it reveals it. When capacity is stretched, it's not asking you to push people harder, it's asking you to look at the conditions. So here's the question. I'll leave you with. If you're leading people, what are the people around you carrying right now and no one has said out loud? Because those experiences and conditions are shaped by how you lead, whether you recognize it or not. If this landed, I encourage you to reply or comment with one thing that you're willing to trade this week. Whether it's for yourself or your team. And if you want to talk about this or talk through it, happy to connect. Feel free to reach out. Because we're the only ones in some ways that can control this narrative around busy and full. And so I encourage you to twist your paradigm when you think about capacity. Thanks for joining me.