Referred pain

Are you working with someone who is really responsive but doesn’t help you get anywhere? If the emails are flying, the deadlines buzz like alarms, yet a nagging sense of unease persists—a feeling that this frenetic energy isn’t translating into real progress—you might be experiencing the organizational equivalent of referred pain.

Just like physical pain can mask a deeper issue in the human body, a team stuck in the pursuit of inbox zero might be suffering from organizational ailments elsewhere. And so the constant flow of messages are a symptom that something is awry, not the disease itself. The question becomes: where does the real pain originate? Here are a few key culprits:

• Lack of leadership—unclear expectations, lack of feedback, silos, knowledge-hoarding, lack of psychological safety

• Workflow and processes—like bottlenecks, redundant tasks, unclear ownership and accountability, lack of automation of frequent tasks

• Culture and engagement—toxic culture with high stress, low trust, and poor work-life balance, lack of motivation and employee engagement

Cultural issues are the deepest sort of pain, a chronic infection, whereas other issues can be solved by a steady process of elimination, using a combination of performance analysis, survey and feedback, and observation and shadowing. Remember: the way you act may emblematic of an organizational sickness you’re not even aware of.