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Photo by Tim Mossholder
Did you get much sleep?
Our dual citizenship household did not. Even if you're not American, yesterday was an important day. At the end of a year of anxiety and suffering – like an entire year of grimace emojis 😬– the question of which way the US goes is momentous. As we write this, it's not obvious which way it went. At least not yet.
So we're back in the fog. Not from the shock of a global pandemic. This one was a fog we could see rolling in months in advance. But predicting the fog doesn't give you any more ability to see through it once it arrives.
In the fog, simple helps. So we're keeping it short. Three things our boss people need to do this week. Regardless of where the pieces land.
Find some burst capacity
The rest of this week is going to require burst capacity. Take a look at your calendar and imagine a bucket of water. Every existing thing on your calendar is an amount of water in the bucket. Staring down a wall of 7 minute zoom meetings? We're gonna call that 100% full. Anywhere you see empty space, that's your burst capacity. And our sense is that you're going to need more of it than usual.
You don't need to completely clear the decks. We're not saying dump the bucket upside down and cancel all your meetings. But you do need to make space in case something crash lands. Aim for at least 30% capacity. Push the non-urgent things to next week or beyond so that when you're ready if the unexpected comes up.
And if you're wondering what the heck might crash land, that brings us to point number two.
Expect your people might be raw
Bosses, you are gonna get this one wrong. And it's not your fault. But this is us flagging it for you.
Some of your team finds comfort in work. They may be the same people who told you so back in March. That when the world turned upside down, it was reassuring to slot into work. Because it's familiar. Because it gave them something to do. Because it felt like a port of calm when so much was out of control.
Some of your people are just so fucking done right now. They are on the heels of 8 months in an unending stress position and they cannot even. They have been doomscrolling a lot. They are working from home, sometimes in small spaces, often alone. And for many, it's been months since anyone gave them a hug. They are not ok.
As folks come online, you will have people who do not give a shit about politics. And people who do but don't want to talk about it. And you'll have people who do and do want to talk about it. And the hard news for you is that you'll have no idea which. They aren't labeled with a slack emoji so you're gonna want to proceed with caution. They may be raw.
But you can help clear their schedules. Or give them more stuff to distract them, if that's what they need. You can listen for unusual levels of conflict, or missed deadlines, or workload stress. And you can choose not to attribute those things to underperformance when you hear them.
This is a week to reach for empathy before accountability. Not because accountability doesn't matter. But because you're at risk of mistaking hurt humans for bad employees. That's a mistake we don't want you to make.
Lead
We need you to lead. And maybe we need that everyday but especially today. We need you to connect the dots, see us where we are, and remind us that there's meaning to the work we do. Easier said than done, we know. But if you're not sure how to start, here's a template:
First, acknowledge what's happening in the world. In an email, in a team slack channel, whatever makes sense. A hard part for many people is knowing whether they can talk about it at all.
Remind everyone of the supports available. If time off is an option. If deferring deadlines is an option. If you have benefits that support mental health. If you're able to open up office hours or just be in an open call for people to drop in. You can't accurately predict who will need these reminders, so give them to everyone.
Last, and this is the hardest part: give us a sense that you get it. And, ideally, that the company does, too. This is the hardest, because you might not, or the company might not, and it won't help to fake it. But if you do, we need to hear that. Companies are made of people and it matters a lot to know whether those people get it or not.
This fog will lift. But while we wait for the fog to lift, expect to drive a little slower, and take a little more care.
- Melissa and Johnathan