The Circle of Could and Should: Leading a Team With Less Than You Need
The shortage is real. What you can put down is the loop of designing a job you can't actually run right now.
When you're leading with less than you need, the shortage is real. Nobody should talk you out of that. What you can put down is the loop: the hours spent designing the job you'd be doing with more time, more people, more budget, when none of that is available to spend on the job in front of you today. The way out is one step you can take with what's on your desk right now.
Years ago I was carrying a quota built on a new product launch. Week one, the inventory constraints hit. I couldn't get my hands on the one product every client was asking for.
My first thought was the one everybody has. How the hell do I hit quota if I can't sell what's in demand?
What wasn't in my control was how much stock there was. What was in my control was how I communicated with my clients, logging backorders so they were ready to fill the minute product became available, and not letting panic set in. That was the difference between accepting defeat and taking control of what I could.
There's a kind of book written for new managers where none of that ever happens.
The team is staffed. The budget cleared. The stock is on the shelf. The problem is that your best person is a little too ambitious and you have to figure out how to keep them. Those are real problems. They're also the problems of a company that's winning.
Most people I talk to aren't there. They got the title and inherited a team that's short two people, a quarter that was planned before they arrived, and a set of expectations nobody has revised since the headcount was cut. They aren't trying to be a visionary. They're trying to get through Thursday.
I don't think that's a mindset problem, and I want to say that clearly before anything else. I understand the economy we're in. I understand the job market we're in. The budget is what it is. When someone tells me they don't have what they need, my first move is to believe them.
What is the circle of could and should?
Here's what I hear underneath it, almost every time.
"If I had more time to be doing this, I'd be doing that. You end up talking yourself into a circle of all the things that you could or should've."
That's the part I want to look at. The circle.
The circle feels like planning. It has the texture of work. You're thinking hard about the team, running the versions, weighing what you'd do with two more people and a real budget. And at the end of an hour of it you've moved nothing, because every version of the job you just designed requires resources that don't exist.
It's also the most tiring thing you can do with an afternoon. It never closes. There's no last lap. You can run could and should all week and arrive Friday having carried the whole thing without setting any of it down.
What are the two questions that break the circle?
When someone is in that loop, I stop asking about the plan and start asking about the ledger.
"What can I control versus what I can't control?"
It's an old question and people nod at it, which is a problem, because nodding is different from doing it. Doing it means writing two lists. Writing them, so the second one is finite and sitting on a page where you can see it, instead of tumbling around in the back of your mind.
Almost always the uncontrollable list is shorter written down than it felt. And almost always the controllable list has something on it you've been walking past.
The second question is the one that tends to land harder.
"What's more costly in terms of your time and your effort?"
Because the circle has a price and nobody puts it on the books. If you spend four hours a week thinking about the job you'd be doing with all the resources you could ask for, that carries a cost. Half a day, gone, from a week you already said was too short.
Start with the process you have
The other thing that keeps people stuck is a belief that the first move has to be the right one.
"You're starting with a process, whether it's the best one or not. As things progress, you pull in additional resources. You find the kind of people that can help."
Nobody who built something useful started with the good version. They started with what was possible that week, and it got better because they could see what needed patching up as things progressed. A process you're actually using teaches you things a process you're still ideating never will.
That includes the parts you're bad at. If you're bad at finance, you can work with an accountant.
"Yes, there's gonna be things you're not as good at, like the accounting side. But guess what? You can work with an accountant, whether that's an employee or a contractor or some online service. There are resources and people out there."
You aren't required to be sufficient by yourself. That's a strange thing to have to say to a new manager, and I say it constantly, because somewhere in the promotion people pick up the idea that asking for help is now proof that they didn't deserve the role.
Every great leader started a job or a project not knowing what they were doing at some point. Why would you feel that you'd be different? We can only get over imposter syndrome when we accept that we're going to get some things wrong and maybe even embarrass ourselves in the beginning. It's a part of the process that you can't avoid. The quicker you barrel through that and stay curious, the quicker you'll build your confidence in any role.
Why is small the size that fits?
The last piece is the one people resist, because it sounds like being told to lower the bar.
"What's a small step that you could better understand? We're not worried about trying to understand the entire picture of the business."
"Those little things oftentimes can be much bigger than we give credit for."
When you're short, small is the only size that fits through the door. And the effects run bigger than the step: the conversation you've been avoiding, the one process you write down, the person you finally ask for help. Those change the week. The five-year plan doesn't change the week.
I ask a version of this at the end of most sessions, and I ask it because the only exit from the circle is a step.
"What's one step?"
One step, sized to what you have, that you can take before Friday. Forget the step you'd take with a full team and a real budget. That step isn't available.
The part you already know
Now here's the part you already know, and now you're going to act on it.
"You can only control the things that you can control."
On its own that's a fridge magnet, and I wouldn't blame anyone for rolling their eyes at it. It only means something after you've written the two lists, priced the circle, and picked the one step. The stock was my uncontrollable list. The calls and the backorder log were the other one. Then it stops being advice and starts being a description of where your effort is going.
The shortage may not change this quarter. You still get to decide what you do with the hours you have, and how much of your week you hand to a version of the job that doesn't exist.
If you're newer to the seat itself rather than short on resources inside it, the first 90 days carry their own version of this same problem.
