this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Or they have too much work
In a broken or toxic system, yup that very much could be it.
I can see that you're engaging thoughtfully and in good faith, but that's a pretty glaring omission from your original post.
Even in organizations that are healthy in many ways for most people, there can still be people who are stretched thin and don't feel empowered to throttle their workload for whatever reason.
Culture for most people begins and ends at their boss. And if they don't feel empowered it's often because of their boss and the culture their boss creates.
This topic like most are more nuanced than this, sometimes it's that person's own history and issues and not the bosses, like maybe past locations are childhood and so on. But this things aren't really something a boss can do anything about. The boss is responsible for creating a healthy environment that encourages healthy boundaries and the measurement is that they are getting the results from the majority of the people the majority of the time.
Is the measurement that they're getting the results, or is it that they aren't working extra hours? "Getting the results from the majority of the people the majority of the time" is exactly how I'd expect an executive to handwave employees burning out due to the kind of environment we're talking about. Not everybody is going to manifest visible problems at the same time, so it will just look like a handful "not working out" every once in awhile, which is to be expected.
It could describe a healthy environment equally well... But my point is just that your formulation ("Results from the majority of the people the majority of the time") doesn't seem to me to have the ability to distinguish between a healthy and a toxic environment.
The phrase applies to negative results not positive ones because the rest of the phrase is it's not the people it's the system which implies a problem not a good result. Going through all the details of the system is more than I'm willing to type. If you'd like to know more these are a few of my favorite resources.
Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
Beyond Command and Control by John Seddon
First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham
The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman
Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Oh, sorry for misunderstanding you. I'm used to "getting results" as referring to achieving measurable business objectives, but the meaning changes completely if you meant the opposite, and I'm not sure I follow what you're saying in that case.
Thanks for the recommendations. I will look at those.