The answer: Don’t ask them to do more with less.

Instead, ask them to do less of what doesn’t matter and more of what does matter.

Morale has little to do with how hard people work or how tough the job is. People will do extraordinary things and work incredibly hard if they feel their contribution matters. Most of the day job consists of carrying out tasks that somebody has to do. If one person now has to do the tasks of two people, you’re obviously going to burn out that one person. Instead, re-think those two jobs. Which tasks truly add value for the customer? Which don’t? Are you asking people to spend time and energy on things that don’t matter much just because they’ve always been done that way?

Talk with the employee about it. What does the person really want to contribute? What does that person think his or her customer really wants? Then start shedding tasks that interfere with those things.

An emergency nurse in a Chicago hospital who found herself all at once trying to manage one bleeding patient, another who was having a heart attack, and another who couldn’t breathe—well, she quit. Who can blame her? Some situations are just ludicrous.

But another nurse, Angela Crawford, moved back to her homeland of Barbados after many years working in a Canadian hospital. There she found incredibly overworked nurses. But after selling hospital administrators on the continuous improvement philosophy she had learned in Canada, every nursing procedure went under scrutiny. Mentors were assigned to new nurses. Procedures were simplified and bettered. She has sponsored health fairs and other methods for preventing disease, thus reducing the workload.

Today Angela is president of the Barbados Registered Nurses Association. She is known as “the nurse who transformed the Barbados health care system” and eased the heavy burdens of hundreds of her co-workers. 

None of this was in Angela’s job description. Like Angela, you can use your own resources and initiative to help your people do more of what matters and less of what doesn’t. And then watch morale rocket upwards.

How can you start to do less of what doesn’t matter and more of what does matter? What else is going on in your organization? We’d like to hear from you.

You can find these and other ideas for thriving in this challenging new era in our book Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times.

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 Here is a sample of one from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Signature Program. Mike Bechtel, one of FranklinCovey’s senior delivery consultants, has provided some great ways to use the video Circle of Influence.

Best Practice: Set-up

Before showing this video, ask participants to take notes as they watch. They’ll learn the difference between the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. Then, they’ll hear the story of Ben, a worker at a university who worked his way up through the ranks simply by putting his energy into the things he could influence. Ask them to list the things that were in each of Ben’s circles.

Best Practice: Debrief

Use two flip charts to gather conclusions from the group. “What was in Ben’s Circle of Concern? What was in his Circle of Influence? How did those choices impact those around him?” Ask for volunteers to share a situation that causes concern that most of the group could identify with-traffic, financial issues, relationships, etc. Then draw two circles on a flip chart, and have the group decide what things are in each circle.

Additional Thoughts

How do we use these two circles to become more proactive? Once we’ve decided what items are in each circle, we have to make two choices:

 1. Put energy into the things that are in the Circle of Influence.

2. Don’t put energy into the things that are in the Circle of Concern.

The result? Whichever circle you put your energy in will grow. It’s that simple! Some people might feel that their Circle of Influence is just a tiny speck in the center of a huge Circle of Concern. But the principles still hold: no matter how small the circle is, that’s where we want to focus our energy. When we do, growth is inevitable and the Circle of Concern will shrink.

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