“If you want something done, ask a busy person.”
If all you care about is one single task, then that common wisdom might be good advice. But if you make it a habit or build a system around that strategy, some day it will crumble.
A similar danger shows up when your team has a star performer, especially if they’re known for heroic rescues during fire drills. When things flare up, it’s tempting to tap the most reliable engineer, the calmest problem solver, or the one who “just gets it done.”
The recognition and mastery that these high performers feel when they consistently solve increasingly difficult problems can become intoxicating for them, and depending on them can become addicting for you.
But over time, they will start to feel fatigue, and the rest of your team will not be prepared to step in.
Am I suggesting that you assign a lone junior engineer to resolve the next high-priority system outage? Certainly not. But before things get out of hand, take a moment to notice any imbalance in the distribution of “hard things” among your team. Does the same person always take care of it or do you have a rotation? Is the decision made automatically or deliberately? Do your less experienced team members have stretch opportunities to develop the skills to handle hard things?
If you’d like to explore your situation further, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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