How do I know if my team is genuinely over capacity?
Calibrating Workload Honestly
Moving from an impression to a defensible figure, and the arithmetic that makes the staffing conversation possible.
Procedure
Designing the work
The interventions with the largest effects, and the ones most often skipped because they are slower, more expensive and more political than buying a subscription.
7 questions
People say they have no time to do their actual work.
Meeting Load and Fragmented Time
Fragmentation costs more than the meeting hours suggest. What to measure, what to cut, and the defaults that quietly generate the load.
Procedure
How do people get demanding work done during the day?
Protecting Uninterrupted Time
Concentration requires blocks, and most workplaces are designed to prevent them. What actually protects time, and what only appears to.
Procedure
Why does the team collapse whenever one person is off?
Staffing to Actual Demand
Teams planned at full utilisation cannot absorb normal variation. The arithmetic of coverage, and why lean staffing costs more than it saves.
Analysis
People are working hard but the wrong things keep happening.
Unclear and Conflicting Roles
Ambiguity about what you are responsible for, and conflict between what different people expect, are both measurable and both fixable.
Procedure
Why is every project a crunch at the end?
Deadlines Set by Hope
Commitments made without evidence become the team's problem. How estimates get compressed, and what an honest commitment process looks like.
Analysis
Can people change their roles without a reorganisation?
Letting People Shape Their Own Work
Small, negotiated adjustments to task mix and method. One of the few individual-level interventions with a decent evidence base.
Procedure