Your team is busy. You’re busy. Everyone’s working hard.
So why does it still feel like nothing’s getting done?
In this episode of What the Hell Just Happened?, Paul Edwards and CeCe unpack one of the most frustrating realities in growing businesses. The harder everyone works, the more stuck things seem to become.
It’s easy to blame burnout. Or staffing. Or motivation.
But the real issue is simpler and harder to see.
The work is a mess.
Not because your team isn’t capable, but because no one has stepped back to actually look at how the work is structured. Who owns what. What’s piling up. What’s getting dropped. And where leaders are quietly becoming the biggest bottleneck in the business.
Paul shares the moment this became clear. He was standing in front of a wall covered in tasks and realized two things at once. He was doing too much of the wrong work, and his team had more capacity than anyone thought.
That realization changes everything.
This episode gives you the concepts.
The guide shows you exactly how to apply them.
Download the “Why Nothing Gets Done” Guide and walk through the same exercises Paul describes in this episode.
You will map your team’s workload, identify hidden bottlenecks, and start reorganizing work immediately.
From there, the conversation dives into the key shifts that make all the difference:
These are not motivation problems. They are structure problems.
When work is misaligned, even strong teams feel overwhelmed. Priorities compete. Tasks stall. Leaders stay stuck in the weeds.
Over time, it creates frustration, burnout, and the false belief that you just need to hire more people.
But most businesses do not need more people. They need better organization of the work they already have.
If this episode feels familiar, that is a good thing.
It means you are close to fixing it.
The next step is simple. Make the work visible, realign it, and focus your team.
Get the free guide and follow along step by step:
This is not about working harder. It is about seeing what is actually happening inside your business and fixing it.
Because once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
And that is when things start to move.
00;00;01;23 – 00;00;23;09
Paul
And you’re about to listen to an episode of What the Hell Just Happened? Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss interesting HR topics and solve some of our listeners submitted questions listening to my three part series on why your team is working hard but falling behind. This is something I see all the time. Good people you’ve got busy teams.
00;00;23;09 – 00;00;44;14
Paul
Everyone’s putting in the effort, but somehow progress just doesn’t show. It just isn’t there. And with that happens, most of us as leaders assume it’s a people issue. I’m here to tell you it’s probably not. It’s how the work is being handled. In this series, I’m going to walk you through a simple three step system that fixes that.
00;00;44;16 – 00;01;07;25
Paul
Those three steps are mastering the task inventory, the four quadrants, and the scrum principle, which is going to be driven by sprints. So now let’s get into it. All right. Welcome to the first part of three things that we’re going to teach you guys do. It’s called the task inventory. We call it the task inventory because it’s you do exactly what that sounds like.
00;01;07;27 – 00;01;28;27
Paul
You want to go big pitcher. You want to go to a whiteboard and you want to write down everything it is that has to be accomplished at your at your business on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. So the goal here is to get all of the things that have to get done on that board, and then put a name or names next to each of those things.
00;01;28;29 – 00;01;41;27
Paul
So if you and your manager do something together, you both kind of share the responsibility. Both names go up there. CeCe can you give them a list? Kind of get them going? Like what kind of things are going to put on the board?
00;01;41;29 – 00;01;52;22
Paul
I mean, it’s everything from who’s paying the mortgage or the rent this month. To who’s calling when a patient, cancels or doesn’t show up.
00;01;52;24 – 00;02;05;07
CeCe
Who’s calling to or who’s creating the schedule for your team? Yeah, right. Who’s, scheduling patients, who’s following up on billing errors with insurance? Everything.
00;02;05;09 – 00;02;24;15
Paul
Everything marketing everything. You just want to put it all up on the board. And then once you do that, you may decide to break some of those things down into some smaller things, like, you know, marketing could be everything from making sure, like who’s who’s responsible for getting the patients to put a good Google review up.
00;02;24;17 – 00;02;29;07
Paul
And and then underneath marketing, there may be 4 or 5 other things that you do with your practice.
00;02;29;07 – 00;02;32;22
CeCe
Who checks social media? Who responds to questions?
00;02;32;22 – 00;02;40;03
Paul
Who, who gets online and keeps an eye on the Facebook page when potential patients reach out and say, hey, I have a toothache, can you see me? You know, that kind of thing.
00;02;40;06 – 00;02;53;05
Paul
So you’re going to end up with a whiteboard or a big white sticky notes. If you don’t have a whiteboard, you can go to the office supply place and get their giant sticky notes, you know, put them on the wall and you’re going to put all of the tasks, the things that they have to get done.
00;02;53;08 – 00;03;00;04
Paul
And then you’re going to put names next to each one of them. So when they put the names up there, what are they going to find?
00;03;00;06 – 00;03;05;20
CeCe
Well, they’re going to find either more than likely somebody has too many things next to their name.
00;03;05;20 – 00;03;06;02
Paul
Right.
00;03;06;02 – 00;03;10;16
CeCe
Or and maybe there’s probably 1 or 2 people who don’t have enough access to their name.
00;03;10;17 – 00;03;22;06
Paul
That’s possible as well. Kind of I get, I think some people who whose names end up on the task lists and too many places, they’re kind of a victim of their own success.
00;03;22;06 – 00;03;24;04
CeCe
Absolutely. Yeah. They’re too good at too many things or said yes too often.
00;03;24;07 – 00;03;33;05
Paul
Yeah. And by the way, at some point that becomes overload. So we use terms like burnout.
00;03;33;05 – 00;03;48;18
Paul
We use terms like being stuck. This is part of kind of getting unstuck. Now if you’re stuck and everybody is working hard and they don’t, we don’t seem to get something accomplished. And that’s what this series is about is getting you unstuck.
00;03;48;21 – 00;03;55;13
CeCe
Yeah, that’s really the point, right? Is at some point there’s you only have so many hours in a day, somebody just can’t do all of them.
00;03;55;13 – 00;04;00;14
CeCe
And so there’s things that start to sort of slide down the priority list. And they’re just not getting done.
00;04;00;15 – 00;04;12;12
Paul
No, they get done 80%. And then and then your attention gets taken over and we’re going to cover that in the, in the other segments, in the, in the four quadrants and in the scrum principle and sprints, we’re going to talk more about this.
00;04;12;14 – 00;04;31;25
Paul
So the first thing very simple task here. Put everything on the wall, we’ve given an example in the guide that comes along with these with this instruction. We’ll give you some examples of what it looks like. Just put everything on a wall, put names next to all of that, and believe it or not, without me saying much more, you’re going to start to get insights.
00;04;31;28 – 00;04;52;13
Paul
The insight we got, we get I got I don’t know if I said that right. First thing was I was still doing some things I wasn’t supposed to be doing, and by wasn’t supposed to be doing. Well, that has a lot of connotations, but mostly it’s I didn’t have time to do it well. I could assign it to someone else who did have time to do it well.
00;04;52;16 – 00;05;09;24
Paul
And I’ll use, finance as an example. If I want KPIs on finance. I didn’t have time to run all that stuff, and quite frankly, I wasn’t competent at doing that sort of thing. And it doesn’t get me out of bed. And so I need someone else to do that, and I can let it go. And that frees up some space for me.
00;05;09;26 – 00;05;34;02
Paul
The other thing that we learned was that we did we were overloading someone, it was more than one person and there were a few people that we could put more, we could put people on. But another thing that came from, looking at all the names on the board is it became kind of clear that we had a few we get assigned people some things that they were not competent at, that they were so good at the other four things that their name was next to.
00;05;34;02 – 00;05;52;19
Paul
And one day something needs to get done. And he or she raises her hand and says, I can do that. Yeah, and they do a good job. And you’re like, wow, I didn’t have to do that. And then the next thing comes up and then the next thing, and so, I mean, in your experience, how does how does someone get overloaded?
00;05;52;21 – 00;05;57;27
CeCe
Well, they get overloaded for a couple of reasons. Either they’re too good at so many things.
00;05;57;27 – 00;05;59;22
CeCe
They’re a victim of their own success.
00;05;59;26 – 00;06;13;23
Paul
They’re your go to. Yeah. Or they’re that person who maybe loves to learn or just likes to be needed, and they’re always raising their hand for stuff. Yep. And you don’t think about that cumulative effect that’s happening.
00;06;13;29 – 00;06;29;05
Paul
Yeah. I think for me and this is a good thing, when you start your own business, you kind of want to put your hand in everything you want you. So you learn everything and you as the owner end up doing a lot of things from trying to run payroll, from trying to put together your own employee handbook.
00;06;29;05 – 00;06;50;20
Paul
That idea, by the way, you know, just everything. And on top of doing clinical, on top of trying to figure out, you know, how to cure some of the things you mentioned before, which is, you know, callbacks and fill the schedule. And, you know, after a while you realize you can’t do it all, but you’ve put your hands in everything, so you at least have some kind of understanding.
00;06;50;22 – 00;06;51;18
CeCe
Which is a good thing.
00;06;51;18 – 00;06;52;26
Paul
No, it’s a very good thing.
00;06;52;29 – 00;06;55;00
CeCe
You have to know what it takes to do the work well, right?
00;06;55;00 – 00;07;10;22
Paul
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s classic that somebody you hire, that a new business owner will hire somebody to do something that they can’t do. And then that they won’t get a great outcome. And part of it is because you can’t hold them accountable because you don’t really know what they’re doing.
00;07;10;22 – 00;07;15;09
Paul
And next thing you you’ve invested a bunch of money and you haven’t gotten anything back.
00;07;15;09 – 00;07;26;27
Paul
Task inventory. I hope that was pretty clear. You get out your markers in your in your in your whiteboard and go at it. Because the next thing we’re going to do is the four quadrants.
00;07;26;29 – 00;07;33;13
Paul
When I work through the four quadrants I had, I kind of had to admit something uncomfortable.
00;07;33;15 – 00;07;47;04
Paul
You know, they were coaching us to this. I was spending 90% of my time in work that I was very good at, but I should not have been doing. CeCe, can you speak to that a little bit?
00;07;47;06 – 00;07;53;01
CeCe
Yeah. I mean that’s the trap of typically being at leadership, being at the top of the food chain.
00;07;53;01 – 00;08;17;16
CeCe
Right, is you, you get stuck with all the stuff no one else is doing. You are doing things sometimes because you think you can do them better than someone else, which is a lot of the times. The truth. Until you maybe train someone to be a little better at it. But, you know, often we’re holding on to that stuff because it feels easier to just do it ourselves.
00;08;17;20 – 00;08;20;18
Paul
It’s a checklist. Yeah, we just do it and we’re good at it.
00;08;20;21 – 00;08;23;29
Paul
It’s like a drug. You’re like, oh, that feels good. I just I just did that.
00;08;23;29 – 00;08;34;17
CeCe
Yeah, yeah. And it feels productive. But it’s really taking your leadership capacity. And a lot of times we’re stopping someone else from growing by not giving it away.
00;08;34;20 – 00;08;48;04
Paul
Okay? So let’s give it let’s give that some time here. When we don’t get out of the way and we hold on to something, oftentimes what we’re doing when we don’t even realize it is preventing someone else from kind of moving up the ladder.
00;08;48;07 – 00;09;11;22
Paul
And when we’re talking about small businesses and that’s what we’re talking about here, we’re talking to small businesses. You may have four employees, five employees, eight employees, 15, 35, 40, 50. You’re still a small employer, by the way, as you get bigger, this doesn’t get any easier. It just, it doesn’t. You have to add in middle management that brings in a whole new, whole new scope of things that you have to manage to deal with.
00;09;11;25 – 00;09;29;02
Paul
So when you don’t get out of the way and let some of those things go in the quadrant, that and I’m going to list the quadrants here in a second. It also takes away time from what you could be putting into doing something else or not doing anything at all, because that’s one of the things on my list.
00;09;29;05 – 00;09;51;08
Paul
If you want to work less than, you’ve got to take your hands out of some of the things that you’re in the way of, and also, believe it or not, as hard as you’re working and as good as you are in, in doing these things, it’s also costing you income. Because the place where income is driven is in a different quadrant than what we’re talking about here.
00;09;51;08 – 00;10;12;25
Paul
So I think maybe, well, let’s get back to that. I think we should tell them what the quadrants are. Okay. So, you want to draw, like, an x y axis on a piece of paper. And again we put an example in the guide. There are labels that you put in each quadrant. So in the bottom left quadrant you’re going to put a label in there called incompetent.
00;10;12;27 – 00;10;30;29
Paul
And the next quadrant you’re going to put barely competent. Then when you move up top in the top right, you’re going to put very or just good at it. That’s the thing that we just talked about. And then in the last one you’re going to put something like unique ability. So I want to start with unique ability.
00;10;31;01 – 00;10;49;20
Paul
Okay. Unique ability gets you out of bed. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it that way, but what gets you out of bed in the morning. The thing that you look forward to doing is what you should be focused on as, as an owner, it is the choice that you get to make.
00;10;49;22 – 00;11;11;06
Paul
It should drive income. So if you haven’t been thinking about it that way, that’s a great thing to, to put at the forefront of your thinking is, it is my job here to drive income. And that can manifest itself in a lot of different ways for different people, in different circumstances inside of your practices.
00;11;11;09 – 00;11;22;04
Paul
Another thing that I learned in, in, I think it’s kind of interesting. It’s a nice way to think about it. It’s your unique ability. It gets you out of bed. So much so that you would do it for free if you could. I mean, if, you know, for me…
00;11;22;08 – 00;11;24;05
CeCe
If you won the lottery, you’d still do those things.
00;11;24;06 – 00;11;41;22
Paul
You would still do those things. I on the side of running the business, which I enjoy doing very much, I love to cook. And if I could do it for free, I’d do it for free. That’s what I do right now by owning CEDR and freeing up the time to do it. You know, I commit, I work in the shelter, I cook every week.
00;11;41;24 – 00;11;59;22
Paul
I cook for family and friends. I’m, you know, I was a formerly a chef. I do that for free now. And it is what keeps me going. It it also, I know this is going to sound scary.
00;11;59;24 – 00;12;17;11
Paul
It can lead to you working less if that’s what you choose. It’s the only way as an owner, you’re ever going to get to a place where you’re not working 50 and 60 hours is if you follow the guidance that I’m giving you right now and you understand these quadrants. Make sense?
00;12;17;13 – 00;12;20;06
CeCe
Yes.
00;12;20;07 – 00;12;35;19
Paul
I do want to point something out there are some managers who are listening to this right now. And I have to tell you, as a manager, you don’t get to make this decision. You don’t get to go all the way to this quadrant and say, I’m only going to do the things I want to do that get me out of bed every day.
00;12;35;19 – 00;12;52;25
Paul
And that’s just what it means to be a manager of a business. That is a little bit of the, the way you provide incredible support for the person who owns your company or for the person who leads your company. However, CeCe would you agree, the principle that you need that manager needs to get out of the way, sometimes too?
00;12;52;28 – 00;12;54;20
CeCe
100%. Yes.
00;12;54;23 – 00;13;03;06
Paul
And let people move up and do, if nothing else, when we say move up, I mean just be more engaged and have something more interesting to do.
00;13;03;08 – 00;13;13;00
CeCe
Yeah. Well and the added benefit then is you’re creating succession plans for people, right? So if if you know someone gets hit by the beer truck, then
00;13;13;02 – 00;13;14;26
Paul
That’s a term we use here. It’s an HR term.
00;13;14;26 – 00;13;21;15
Paul
We hear what happens if so-and-so gets hit by beer truck. Does anybody have the passwords? Could somebody pay the bills?
00;13;21;19 – 00;13;34;23
CeCe
Can somebody do these really key things that keep the business running every day? And you need people who are exposed to those things to see where, their talents and skills might lie that you weren’t previously aware of.
00;13;34;23 – 00;13;52;10
Paul
I once had a person who was working at, answering the phones, which, by the way, is a very important position in every business, especially in in any kind of medically related dental practice or any of that stuff. I once had someone who was working on the phones, and she was in a meeting with all of us, and I said something about we can’t get our spreadsheets right.
00;13;52;10 – 00;14;10;17
Paul
And she said, I’m pretty good at spreadsheets. And we went, you are. And she said, yeah, you want me to take a look at it? And she wasn’t just pretty good at it. Her last job was for like eight years. She was a spreadsheet queen. And so those are the kind of things that come to light. And then you always hear about cross-training and having someone to backup.
00;14;10;17 – 00;14;15;07
Paul
You just mentioned it. This is the path to having some of that stuff occur.
00;14;15;12 – 00;14;25;09
CeCe
This is also the path for realizing there’s a different way to do certain things, that maybe you’ve just always done them that way that might be more efficient, more accurate, or whatever it may be.
00;14;25;11 – 00;14;26;20
Paul
Less burdensome.
00;14;26;22 – 00;14;33;24
CeCe
Having another perspective in there, some fresh eyes might give you some insights that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
00;14;33;25 – 00;15;00;14
Paul
Yeah. So managers you you still have to get out of the way somewhat too. Okay. So I’d like to go to the bottom quadrant incompetent and say something about this. It’s not a moral judgment. So we always say oh you’re incompetent. And that’s like a bad thing. But when I learned this and I had to tell myself or actually my brother, who’s a partner in the business, the silent partner in the business, he got to say, no, I think you’re getting competent at this.
00;15;00;17 – 00;15;19;00
Paul
And he was, you know, we were right. I need to get out of the way. Whatever this is, it’s usually a holdover from something that you were doing when you started the business, and you just held on to it, and you’re still holding on to it. And if you were honest with yourself, you would know that, you don’t have enough time.
00;15;19;02 – 00;15;41;18
Paul
So that makes you incompetent in it. You have too many other things taking up your time, too many other important things. How crazy is it that you’re not focused on driving more income into the practice, because you think you should be running payroll? I mean, and then when you make a mistake at payroll, then it falls on you, and then you’re on with your payroll company and talking to somebody in India and can’t get an answer to anything.
00;15;41;20 – 00;15;54;14
Paul
Is that really the best use of your time? It’s not. You are not competent at doing it because you don’t have time to do it. And you may just not be competent. Doesn’t get you out of bed. You kind of hate doing it.
00;15;54;15 – 00;15;59;01
CeCe
Right. Not everyone’s not good at everything, right. We all have something we’re not fantastic at.
00;15;59;03 – 00;16;15;11
Paul
Yeah. And then we have to move to the next one. I think it’s important to move to the next quadrant, which is barely competent. Again, doesn’t inspire you. Many others could be doing a better job at it than you. That’s the way I look at, barely competent. You can get it done. It’s not that big of a burden.
00;16;15;11 – 00;16;29;04
Paul
It just takes another 15 minutes of your time. But all you have to do is about 4 or 5 of those things that only take 15 or 20 minutes of your time. And the next thing you know, you’re pushing one of them off. You’re not getting it done on time. You feel like it’s a burden to you.
00;16;29;07 – 00;16;49;20
Paul
When you operate in incompetent and barely competent, you’re also probably walking around with a little cloud over your head. Yeah, you know what I mean. The little little wheels, the cartoon people going to blow the clouds always over the top of you. So you’re kind of operating in those two places. So again, I want you to know, and this is crazy.
00;16;49;20 – 00;16;56;15
Paul
This is an epiphany. There are people who will do the incompetent thing that you do that gets it, gets them out of bed.
00;16;56;20 – 00;16;58;24
CeCe
It’s in their first quadrant.
00;16;58;24 – 00;17;12;17
Paul
It’s in their first quadrant. They’re like, oh my gosh, I get to take all the numbers and put together the KPIs and report them on time on Friday. It’s crazy that other people take your incompetency and put it in their first quadrant, and it makes them very happy.
00;17;12;19 – 00;17;31;07
Paul
So, you know, that’s a little bit of inspiring. And then we go to the the next one, which we’ve, we’ve brushed upon quite a bit. And it’s the trap at the beginning. You’re very good at it. It feels good. It’s a check mark. It’s important, but it’s probably not something that you should be heavily involved in.
00;17;31;10 – 00;17;54;05
Paul
So when you go back to your task inventory which by the way if you’re just listening to this segment, there was a segment before this called the task inventory. If you go back to your task inventory and you look at where your name is and your manager’s name is, and that person that you overloaded and you filter them through the four quadrants, you’re going to get so many insights about who should be doing what, when and where.
00;17;54;07 – 00;18;12;15
Paul
Right? So this exercise was called the four quadrants. Hopefully you guys can look at the example we provided the guide and and, and again this is something that you do on the board. Put your x y axis on there and start writing things down.
00;18;12;18 – 00;18;18;15
Paul
This thinking the scrum principle came out of software building software.
00;18;18;18 – 00;18;46;29
Paul
And, what we’ve learned is, is that through through this kind of study, what we’ve learned is, is that switching context amongst tasks. So we’ve done a task inventory if this is you’re listening to this, there were two other segments that we’ve done. We’ve done the task inventory. We’ve done the four quadrants. If you’ve done those exercises, you’ve you’ve seen that there’s enough to do in a small business in your practice.
00;18;47;01 – 00;19;12;10
Paul
There’s so much to do in it that in the context between those things are really different sometimes. So CeCe, the difference between answering the phone and dealing with a patient who is maybe upset, maybe in pain. They’re trying to get in to see you. And then you hang that phone up and you’ve worked through that problem.
00;19;12;10 – 00;19;28;24
Paul
But when they called, you were on hold with the insurance company, and you were trying to work through $12,000 worth of denials that, you know, you’re supposed to get, the context of those two things is very, very different.
00;19;28;26 – 00;19;38;12
CeCe
Very different. Yes. Their emotional state, the way you’re thinking about them and even the literal physical context you might have windows up that you’re.
00;19;38;15 – 00;19;42;15
CeCe
software that you got to switch, you know, your tabs and all that.
00;19;42;19 – 00;19;55;27
Paul
It’s all context switching. It’s very, very different. And I don’t think enough owners. This is really owners. This is for your team. This is for you to understand about about your team. And I chuckle about, this next part that I’m going to share.
00;19;55;29 – 00;20;17;04
Paul
I have gotten calls, where the doctor says, I don’t think I think I could get a lot more out of my team. I’ve added up how much time they probably spend on things, and it looks like they’re only working like four hours a day. And and it is not until you begin to understand context switching that you realize that the cost of that is pretty high.
00;20;17;07 – 00;20;47;23
Paul
And so the smaller your team, the more context switching every single person has to do. And you have to allow for this. So the, the studies show that, if you’re constantly switching contexts and or maybe starting ten projects at once. So this is the scrum principle. Back to doing software, starting ten parts of the software project that are disparate all at once and trying to get them all done, because that seems to make sense, so that you would arrive with everything finished at the end, right?
00;20;47;25 – 00;21;24;01
Paul
Yeah, that seems to make sense. It takes ten times as long to get there. As opposed to organizing the work into something we call, sprints. So you’re going to break things down into these segments so that you’re accomplishing the parts that you need to accomplish in order to move the project forward. So a good example of context switching in a, in, that I think everybody could relate to in software is you do not have, the same engineer working on the back end of how something works in the software and the front end of how it looks.
00;21;24;04 – 00;21;55;09
Paul
The context between those two things are wholly different, completely different thinking. That’s how they used to do it. Yeah. So, you know, part of this process in creating these sprints and using the sprint technique is that you have to organize the work, and sometimes you have to identify things that you need to get done, and you only work on those things and then you move to the next, the hard part is, CeCe, what does it feel like in our business when we come out of strategic planning?
00;21;55;09 – 00;21;57;03
Paul
Yeah, we got some ideas. What do we want to do?
00;21;57;05 – 00;22;12;02
CeCe
Well, that is the hard part. Some of that is going to be unavoidable, especially in a small business, because you’ve got patients and there’s only a few of you, and somebody needs to see the patient who just came through the door. And you can’t just sit there waiting for that.
00;22;12;02 – 00;22;15;02
Paul
And can’t say wait, because I’m working on I’m working on something.
00;22;15;02 – 00;22;40;05
CeCe
So. So it’s really challenging, sometimes to carve out the time to do, to sit and do the focus. But if you can, you know, there’s, some tools that you can use. There’s, Pomodoro technique is one that’s really well known, where you set a timer maybe 15, 20, 30 minutes, depending on how much time you have and you just commit to I’m not going to check my phone.
00;22;40;05 – 00;22;57;19
CeCe
I’m not going to check my email. I’m not going to do these other things, and I’m just going to focus on getting this thing done. That maybe I’ve already done the 80% and I’ve got that last 20 and I’m just going to commit to that. And it can be really surprising how much you can get accomplished when you have that focus.
00;22;57;19 – 00;23;21;10
Paul
I think we’ve forgotten, about how much you can get done. And, and look, you might do the Pomodoro to get it to 50% and then do another one to get it to 80% and then do the final 20%. But what happens, I think, is, especially with initiatives like you come out of a meeting or you come out of your strategic planning or it just comes about naturally, you’ve taken over a practice, you’ve been running it for a while.
00;23;21;10 – 00;23;43;13
Paul
Maybe it’s six months, maybe it’s a year, maybe it’s longer than that. But you realize, look, we’ve got to there’s about five things, big things we’ve got to do here. We’ve got to change the software. We’re using. We’ve got to change the methodology that we’re using to organize charts and do things. You know, whatever it is, you realize you have all these initiatives that you need to take, take care of, and they’re all important.
00;23;43;13 – 00;23;49;13
Paul
And they all feel like they’re, you know, hair on fire issues. So you want to jump on them one at a time.
00;23;49;15 – 00;23;52;19
CeCe
And sometimes you’re really inspired by them. So you want to do them all at once.
00;23;52;20 – 00;23;53;02
Paul
Guilty.
00;23;53;03 – 00;23;59;07
CeCe
And then that’s like the worst thing right. Because then you lose momentum on all of them and then they’re not as inspiring anymore.
00;23;59;09 – 00;24;17;16
Paul
And because you’re working on all of them at one time, they’re going to take ten times longer. So what you have to do is try to be disciplined. And so back to the sprint. You’re trying to pick something. And I usually try to get something that I’ve been I’ve gotten to 80%. I just can’t finish it. Here’s the here’s the thing that I’ll relay to you.
00;24;17;18 – 00;24;38;28
Paul
Honestly, the Pomodoro rarely is 15 or 20 or 30 minutes. I mean, sometimes you’re trying to finish a marketing piece, or you need to give whoever’s building your website or rebuilding your website, you need to give them your undivided attention and improve some things. Those things can take a shorter amount of time, but usually when I end up in a pomodoro, it’s much longer.
00;24;39;00 – 00;25;02;09
Paul
But the fact is, the only way that I can get it out is if I dedicate the next week to it and and do several pomodoros and give people answers back and move something forward. The other thing that I’d like to mention, about this principle is this is when your team, this is where your team loses engagement.
00;25;02;12 – 00;25;26;28
Paul
This is where they feel burned out. So you may not feel burned out. You may feel frustration. I think owners and leaders feel less burnout. That more frustration. Your team gets burned out. They feel less engaged. But the problem, the real problem is, is there’s rarely a win. And there seems to never be time for a little celebration that we got something done.
00;25;27;01 – 00;25;54;29
Paul
I will share with everybody listening because we’re in this last segment, I will share that CeCe and I are really in our own form of pomodoro here. We’ve been kind of I’ve been wanting to do this for years, this conversation and share this lesson that I, that I, that I learned many years ago. But, you know, once we open this Pandora up and we started building it, more and more needed to be done in order to, including recording these short lessons needed to be done.
00;25;55;01 – 00;26;09;24
Paul
And you just have to make space for it in order to, to accomplish it. CeCe, is there anything else we want to add to the, to the, to the scrum principle and sprints. I think we’ve explained it pretty well.
00;26;09;27 – 00;26;11;12
CeCe
I think so.
00;26;11;12 – 00;26;15;27
Paul
I could share this. It works if you just, if you just try it it works.
00;26;15;29 – 00;26;35;15
Paul
You have to practice it. You will have to come back to these principles. Every now and then, especially when you get inspired, you realize you have a lot of work to do. Okay. All right. This was the last segment of the three part series. This is called the scrum principle. And the sprint technique.
00;26;35;17 – 00;26;54;12
Voiceover
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00;26;54;14 – 00;27;03;08
Voiceover
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Friendly Disclaimer: This information is general in nature and is not intended to provide legal advice or replace individual guidance about a specific issue with an attorney or HR expert. The information on this page is general human resources guidance based on applicable local, state, and/or federal U.S. employment law that is believed to be current as of the date of publication. Note that CEDR is not a law firm, and as the law is always changing, you should consult with a qualified attorney or HR expert who is familiar with all of the facts of your situation before making a decision about any human resources or employment law matter.
A Blog Written by CEDR, written by HR Experts to help you run your practice.
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