Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of leaders from Support, Sales, People Ops, Engineering, and Product teams.
When I compare conversations in 2020 to 2022, the conversations started from an uncertainty of what was to come to now a firm sense of understanding the future and impact of hybrid/remote work. I also saw concerns of defining what the new normal was and how to maintain quality and engagement in a changing workplace.
2022 is really when leaders and companies started to feel stable and optimistic. It was clear that everyone was ready to build from their modified playbooks. The earth finally felt stable and ripe to rebuild on.
But unfortunately, as we saw in 2020 and again now, layoffs started to begin. My Linkedin is filled with constant updates about folks being laid off and companies reducing their hiring and job posts.
So again, priorities shifted back as companies are asking their teams to do more with less.
Doing more with less is something that I’ve become comfortable within my career. Every startup I have joined has always embraced scrappiness as a company virtue and customer support is usually one of the first victims of keeping things lean and efficient as possible.
Here are three things that I have learned in how to survive during these lean times while being asked to continue to deliver.
Keep Things Simple
Panic is an amazing distraction and can cause rampant misinformation. I’ve noticed many leaders try to combat this by excessively communicating as a first strike but it’s always messy — Influx of mass emails, all hands meetings, one-way chat messages, and more. While executive leadership presence is great, overcommunication leads to dilution of intent. It all ends up feeling staged and ingenuine and will only lead to more distrust.
Instead, leaders must make things easy, digestible, and approachable:
- Information must be easily accessible and up-to-date. No one wants to scramble around multiple platforms and messages to understand what is going on. If you repeat information in too many places, this always leads to people being misinformed because they don’t know what is true and accurate.
- Avoid information blasts. No one wants to be given a never ending chain of updates. Break things apart, offer summarizations, and never assume that people know prior context to previous conversations.
- Clear path for questions and answers. The delivery of news isn’t the hardest part, it’s responding to the questions and reactions that follow afterwards. The worst thing you can do is not offer a place for people to reflect and ask questions. You keep things simple by anticipating commonly asked questions and addressing them head on. Effective communication removes speculation, which is a must to keep teams focused.
Be Data Transparent
Strategic leaders love to state that they’re making data-driven business decisions. However, a consistent weakness I’ve learned is that without being data transparent, they only create a “you should trust me without proof” culture which can lead to distrust.
Data transparency and literacy enable teams to be informed and feel involved:
- Show how teams and individuals impact the bottom line. OKRs are a great practice that enables teams to feel connected to company goals, but require a connecting thread to feel invested and engaged.
- Make sure employees are able to understand what are key metrics and how they are calculated. The less mystery employees feel like they need to uncover, the easier it becomes to trust what’s being shared with them.
As long as employees and teams feel like they can monitor the impact of their work, then a culture of initiative can be created as motivations set in.
In fact, by encouraging teams to share ideas and suggestions on how to improve and also encouraging them to pilot/test, then you’re able to promote and foster innovation and collaboration. If changes lead to positive outcomes, then you’re able to progress — otherwise, you can pivot and move on.
Push for Sustainability, Not Burnout
Turbulent times require everyone to hold on and brace for impact. However, the expectation that employees need to deliver more without any accommodations is destructive.
The consequence of this is that without a glimmer of hope or incentive, this doesn’t last long. Teams are quick to burn out, and ultimately, they’ll either be checked out mentally or they’re going to leave. This small bump in productivity only leads to performance drops and gaps, which becomes a coaching nightmare. Ultimately, a costly exercise when you have to rehire and train new employees to replace them, assuming that there are people who want to work for you.
Instead, leaders need to advocate for independence and flexibility as means to build trust to make the workload sustainable.
For example, I used to have a steadfast approach to scheduling — Everyone had to follow a specific schedule of hours and days. No questions asked because I wanted to make sure my operation was predictable and consistent.
Problem with this approach is that I was being too rigid in an environment where things were not predictable or consistent internally or externally — especially when the company was hitting leaner times.
This is when I learned to change my philosophy to what I use to this day — Work should be challenging, but you trying to do work shouldn’t be.
So my strategy shifted and I started asking my teams what can I do to better accommodate you so you can continue focusing on work with less distraction?
Here are some of the things that learned when it came to accommodating flexible schedules:
- Parents juggling childcare and needing scheduled (or unscheduled) breaks to pick up their kid from school/go to doctor visits/random things that happen that kids get into (which I learned is a lot)
- Students who needed accommodations to make it to/from classes
- Public parking struggles and allowing team members to coordinate schedules so they can swap parking spots (in San Francisco, this was major)
By focusing on what my teams needed to be sustainable and removing blockers that made it difficult for work/life balance, this flexibility led to less last minute call outs because we had open communication on what people needed to be supported. By reducing these production and performance gaps, our efficiency also improved.
Doing more with less always will always make you feel uncertain of what’s to come when you’re entering rough waters, but the reality is that it’s a great opportunity to challenge yourself and your team’s playbook.
By being able to focus on integral needs of your team, improving your communication strategy, and using performance metrics as a guiding star — it’ll be clear skies and smooth sailing.
