A lot of people are struggling right now with burnout. They have been pushing so hard since the start of the pandemic and do not see an end in sight. They are worn to the core and thus resistant to doing more with so much less.
From my perspective, this level of burn-out is the outcome of a problem, namely a reaction to prolonged stress. I also think the actual problem is that people are feeling overwhelmed by too many inputs and too many demands. They are constantly trying to process all that is happening around and within them.
As a client shared with me not too long, people are hitting their “surge capacity.” The minute she used this term I had huge “aha”moment. It was like a major light bulb had illuminated a whole new perspective for me.
Given the impact of this global pathogen, and the resulting levels of anxiety and uncertainty, we have a low tolerance for change. First, our pandemic fatigue has turned into decision fatigue. Second, as John O’Donohue pointed out, “our trust in the future has lost its innocence. We now know that anything can happen from one minute to the next….. Politics, religion and economics and the institutions of family and community all have become abruptly unsure.” Third, we are suffering from the “CNN Effect” , namely the breathless, twenty-four hour media coverage makes it considerably harder for leaders to be anything but reactive. As Ryan Holiday notes in his book, Stillness Is The Key (Portfolio/Penguin, 2019, “… it’s very difficult to think or act clearly (to say nothing of being happy) when we are drowning in information…. We have stopped doing the following: Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”…. We have not been in charge of our own information diet.”
For me, surge capacity is our ability to manage a sudden influx of inputs or problems that exceed our normal operating capacity. As leaders, we do not like to sit with this discomfort and be present to ambiguity. We like order and control. However, as we move forward each of us are going to have to improve our surge competencies, i.e. a person’s knowledge and the required skills they need to have in order to meet the specific role requirements related to handling a surge, and the surge capabilities within our organizations, I.e. the collective abilities of a team or company to move from normal operations to a new level of operations in order to meet an increase in volume that exceeds normal operating capacity.
This week, reflect on the concept of surge capacity and figure out what new surge competencies you need to master and what new surge capabilities your organization needs to get batter at during the coming months. The future will continue to be more complicated and complex during the coming years.
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