Welcome to “Driving Businesses by Developing People” written by me, David Huynh. For those who do not know me, I am a people-focused business professional who builds team members to generate results. Thank you for joining me. If you are not on my email list yet and want to dive deeper into the intersection of business and people with me, you may subscribe here:
The last two weeks, we discussed the first two parts of our three part series on tailoring our approach with each team member, covering speaking with and spending time with each team member differently. Today, we will cover the third component of tailoring our approach, customizing work allocation across team members, and continue to drive the underlying thesis that a tailored treatment of team members will lead to greater team and individual success.
Out of college, I joined a consulting firm, which was segmented into multiple groups or focus areas. I was a part of a small group, which had a handful of partners and managers and about a dozen consultants. As a consulting firm, our work was project-based and therefore the partners and managers needed to decide which consultants would be assigned to which projects. With the overarching goal of delivering a high quality project, staffing decisions were based on the business' need and the consultants' ability and bandwidth. These are relevant metrics and capture the business centric perspective. To tailor work allocation to truly optimize for team performance and individual growth, we need to balance the business centric perspective alongside the team centric perspective, which covers the business' resources and team member's morale and interest.
When assigning work, there are three main parameters to consider: Type, Difficulty, and Volume of Work. The type of work needs to balance the business needs and the team member's interests. The difficulty of the assigned work needs to balance the team member's ability with the business's resources. Lastly, the volume of work needs to balance the team member's bandwidth and morale. The following diagram outlines these three parameters and the factors that need to be balanced. The orange factors are business centric, meaning placing weight in these factors are favorable to short term business results. The blue factors are team centric, meaning placing weight in these factors are favorable to long term team development.
Type
Business needs serve as the foundation for determining the type of work that can be assigned. However, the "type" of work can be framed in several different ways such that even when our business has specific needs, we can find a way to fit them into the team members' interests.
For example, an accountant working on project can be focused on auditing quarterly reports for a tech company. One way the "type" of work can be framed is "accounting", in which case, all projects for an accounting firm would be the same, making it difficult to tailor work type to each accountant. To highlight the differences, the "type" of work can also be framed as, but not limited to, "auditing", "forecasting", "analysis-heavy", "tech industry", "client facing", or "report generation". If the accountant was interested in developing presentation skills, then we can frame this project as a way to build on those skills through client facing work. By changing the framing of the work, through highlighting specific features that align with the individual's interests, we can balance both business needs and individual interest.
Difficulty
As mentioned in A Tailored Approach Part 2 of 3, task difficulty needs to be compared against team member ability, which covers the business centric perspective. To pair with assessing ability, we need to review available resources, the team centric approach. In this context, resources refer to levers that can help the team member achieve their task, such as guidance from another team member/manager, written guides that explain processes and methodologies, or sufficient time to iterate on the solution.
If only team member ability is considered, they are being pinned as an individual with a fixed capability. However, once we bring in the coaching and time investment from the individual as well as their peers/manager(s), the team member will be able to elevate to handle higher difficulty tasks, assuming resources are available. Conversely, if there is not enough time or guidance available, we will need to allocate lower difficulty work to match the team member's ability. At my consulting firm, the leaders did a great job pairing senior consultants with junior consultants so that they could provide guidance to the less experienced team members. As I became more senior, I further extended the guidance available to junior consultants by building process guides for tackling complex problems, which supplemented the capabilities of junior team members by elevating the group's resources.
Volume
The volume of work depends on the team member's bandwidth and morale. Bandwidth is the amount of capacity (e.g., time) that an individual has for accomplishing tasks. For example, if an individual's entire work day is full of required/urgent tasks, they would have no additional bandwidth on that given day, assuming nothing changes. Alternatively, if an individual was working on low priority non-urgent projects that can be delayed or had free time available, they would have additional bandwidth. Traditionally, most managers assign work to individuals that have more bandwidth, which correlates with more perceived capacity to accomplish more tasks. This capacity is only perceived and not genuine because bandwidth needs to be cross-referenced with morale.
Morale represents the willingness of an individual to take on and drive additional work. Individuals with high morale believe in the team or organization's efforts and want to drive it to success, regardless of their bandwidth level. Conversely, individuals with low morale are unmotivated and will not want to take on additional work, even if they have high bandwidth. Previously, I discussed why morale is an organization's most important resource, which covers how we can gauge and optimize morale. Given the interplay between morale and bandwidth, we will need to tailor our approach in the following manner:
For individuals with low morale and low bandwidth, we will need to motivate them. For individuals with low morale, but high bandwidth, we can gauge their morale by giving small pieces of work and observing their reaction. If positive results and attitudes follow, we can continue to give more pieces of work, otherwise, they will move to the low morale and low bandwidth quadrant. For individuals with high morale, but low bandwidth, we should wait and see if we can assign the work to someone else. If the work cannot be assigned elsewhere, we can comfortably assign work to these individuals, but should not make it a habit because stretching people beyond their bandwidth is not sustainable in the long run. Lastly, for individuals with high morale and high bandwidth, we can freely assign work their way.
Tailoring our approach optimizes business results and team member development because it can directly impact employee effectivity and retention rates. When I was consulting, I noticed many of my colleagues, myself included, had low morale. However, work continued to pile on, which resulted in the median consultant lasting less than two years at the firm. Once I left and moved onto manage my own team, I also noticed some individuals had low morale. In these cases, I did not freely assign work, but rather found ways to motivate them, such as listening to their goals and helping them work towards them, which resulted in higher retention rates and longer term sales growth results compared to the rest of the organization.
Closing Remarks
As managers, we need to deeply understand our team, their morale, their bandwidth, their interests, their abilities and balance these with business needs and resources so that we can appropriate tailor our approach with each team member. At the end of the these balancing acts, the more talented individuals will end up getting harder work, the individuals with higher morale will end up receiving a higher share of work, and all individuals should be working towards their interests if permissible by business needs. Extending this logic, if we are able to continuously train and motivate our team members, the collective group can achieve increasingly difficult and larger quantities of work.
If these topics are interesting, I have previously written about motivation and training (see embedded links). In the future, expect additional articles to dive deeper into these topics from different angles.
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