Most teams can tell you what has been added to their workload over the past year. New reports, new meetings, another approval, or an extra step somebody requested along the way. Ask what has been removed, though, and the answer may take a little longer. We are usually much better at adding work than retiring it.
That connects to something I wrote about recently: your team may already know what needs to change. Listening to them is a good start, but we also have to give them room to act on what they know. If every improvement must fit around an already full day, even a useful idea can sit untouched for months. The people who understand the problem are still busy keeping everything moving.
Consider a weekly report that takes an hour to prepare. It may have started for a good reason, perhaps to monitor a difficult rollout or give someone information they couldn't get elsewhere. Years later, the report is still being produced, even though the rollout is finished and the information is available in another system. Somebody continues doing the work because nobody has decided it can stop.
I think this is an important part of leadership across product, development, operations, and the business. We spend a lot of time discussing what our teams should deliver next. We should also understand what they are carrying forward from earlier decisions. Otherwise, a new priority becomes another obligation on top of everything that was already a priority.
That does not mean every old process needs to go. Experience has taught me to respect the history behind how things work. An approval may protect a customer, a review may catch an expensive mistake, and a report may support a decision we do not see from our part of the business. Before removing something, we need to understand who depends on it and what purpose it still serves.
But respecting that history also means being willing to review it. Is the information still being used? Does the same person still need to approve this? Could we meet the original need with less effort? Those are reasonable questions, and the people doing the work should have a place in answering them.
There is an opportunity here for technology teams to deliver real value. Sometimes that means building a better product or improving an integration. Sometimes it means helping the business recognize that a task no longer needs to happen at all. Both require us to understand the work before deciding what to change.
A practical place to start is with one task. Ask your team what they would review first if the goal were to give them a little time back each week. Pick something manageable, understand why it exists, and involve the people who rely on it. If it can change, make the change and check whether it helped.
People want to do useful work, and good teams take pride in doing it well. As leaders, we have a responsibility to make sure their time goes toward work that still matters. Before we ask them to take on the next thing, it is worth asking what they no longer need to carry.
Thanks,
Michael Cronin
Website: https://www.michaelcronin.info
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltcronin/details/experience/
