Why Your Team Is Exhausted and Still Missing Targets  🔗 **Source:** [Why Your Team Is Exhausted and Still Missing Targets](https://share.snipd.com/episode/0924b5bf-7112-4c9b-9835-86f8bc6db785) ## Highlights - **Untangle Knots Instead Of Pushing Or Pausing** - Teams and leaders are stuck between pushing harder and slowing down, but there's a third option: patiently untangle specific knots. - Rachel Cooke's necklace metaphor shows solving small, visible tangles frees the whole chain and restores speed. Transcript: Rachel Cooke Targets are getting missed, timelines are slipping, and leaders are pulling harder. They are saying priorities louder. They are rerunning the comms. Meanwhile, teams are working themselves to the bone and still hitting walls. Today, let's talk about what is actually in the way and why the fix is a lot less glamorous and a lot more effective than most of us want it to be. Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help teams work better by design. We deliver the tools and frameworks to help ensure work is productive, profitable, and energizing for the human spirit. I'd love to come speak at your next event or offsite to deliver the clarity, confidence, and tools your leaders need to bring this shift to life. Reach out today at leadabovenoise.com/connect. So today I want to start with a heads up because I'm on kind of a tear. By now, you know, I spend my days in various organizations. Like right now alone, I'm actively working with clients in financial services, biotech, logistics, healthcare. And what fascinates me is that while realities in each organization are wildly different, the crux of their most vivid pain point is the same, like literally. In each of these companies, the presenting challenge they're struggling with is some version of this. Leaders are frustrated by results. They know their teams are stretched and tired, but the moment they believe is calling us to step up and do more. Slowing down is not an option. So we have to keep going to push harder. And here's what I'm helping them each reckon with. Slowing down and pushing harder aren't the only two options. I've got a whole metaphor having to do with tangled necklaces and how, when we find a mangled ball of chains, we start by trying to fix it with brute force, which almost never works. And some of us give up, but there's a third option, a right option. And it's taking a beat, looking closely at the mangle, finding those tiny knots and working each one out. And when we do, we free up the chains and voila, we have our necklaces back. ([Time 0:01:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0af54757-11e0-4112-bfb2-829936b38ca0)) - **Unsexy Operational Fixes Unlock Speed** - The most impact comes from doing unglamorous operational fixes—process, resourcing, procurement—not high-level vision work. - Rachel Cooke argues these 'grimy' fixes must get a cultural glow-up to relieve chronic burnout. Transcript: Rachel Cooke And friends, this is my tear because the work that most needs to be done right now is the grimyest, grittiest, unsexiest stuff out there. It's looking at the knots in our organizations, the stuff keeping us stuck or slow or off track. And I've hit a wall and I think many of us have. It's about time for that unsexy stuff to have its glow up because if we don't bring the ugly, grimy, sexy into the spotlight, we are going to stay stuck in this cave of burnout forever. ([Time 0:03:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/646f4b96-6214-4dae-b0e0-78401f968299)) - **Tax Software Team Told To Play With AI** - A tax and accounting firm's dev team was told to experiment with AI despite building software that demands regulatory perfection. - Rachel Cooke describes the mismatch: experimentation tolerates error while tax software requires zero mistakes. Transcript: Rachel Cooke Not number one is the AI sandbox with no edges. I'm working right now with a tax and accounting firm and their development team has been told to experiment with AI, find ways to incorporate it into your workflows, get creative. And on the surface, sure, lots of organizations are saying this right now, but here's what this team is sitting with. What they build is software that businesses use to do their taxes. It's built on tax code, on regulations, on rules that are not open to interpretation. And AI, as shiny and compelling as it is, still makes errors. It's imperfect. So what these teams are actually being asked to do is experiment freely a system that demands perfection. And nobody is really helping them find where these two things meet. What they need from leadership isn't a mandate or a clear set of instructions, but it's a dialogue. Where are the boundaries of the sandbox? Where is their margin of error? And where must we be at a hundred percent? Where do you see AI playing a role here? And leaders can do more than answer. They can share their own experiments. They can point to places where they've seen it work well. They can be honest that blending experimentation with a need for precision is genuinely complicated. ([Time 0:04:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d734da27-b029-4559-ab19-febfa7dedc9a)) - **Define Boundaries For AI Experimentation** - Do create a bounded AI sandbox: define boundaries, acceptable error margins, and where 100% accuracy is required. - Rachel Cooke suggests leaders join the dialogue, share experiments, and point to successful use cases. Transcript: Rachel Cooke What they need from leadership isn't a mandate or a clear set of instructions, but it's a dialogue. Where are the boundaries of the sandbox? Where is their margin of error? And where must we be at a hundred percent? Where do you see AI playing a role here? And leaders can do more than answer. They can share their own experiments. They can point to places where they've seen it work well. They can be honest that blending experimentation with a need for precision is genuinely complicated. ([Time 0:05:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/36839cfa-873b-405e-b757-b6f136398a3c)) - **Six Priorities Starve The Same Experts** - A biotech firm set six crisp priorities, but all pull the same small pool of experts, causing weekly tug-of-war between projects. - Rachel Cooke explains leaders assumed fewer priorities solved it, without analyzing cumulative resource demand. Transcript: Rachel Cooke Not number two, six priorities and not enough hands. Then there's this biotech company I'm working with. They have a crisp list of six priorities and senior leaders are proud of that list. It's six, not 16. It's tight, right? But in practice, every one of those six priorities is pulling on the same small group of subject matter experts, the same developers, the same tech resources. So teams are at a tug of war across silos over whose project gets attention this week. And leadership is looking at them like you're all adults, figure it out. What operators are telling me is that the priorities were set without a real understanding of what each one demands, not just individually, but collectively and across how the resourcing Plays out across all of these priorities at once. Now leaders love to say, well, go influence without authority in moments like this, but this is bigger than influencing. You can't influence your way into more hours in a day. The ask here is for leaders to help teams manage the tension that they created. Maybe that means breaking priorities into smaller blocks that get sequenced instead of run in parallel. Maybe it's permission to bring in external support, or maybe it's to start training some new subject matter experts. So the pool gets wider over time. ([Time 0:06:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a6bd3f68-404d-4285-9a97-43234521f9db)) - **Sequence Work Or Expand Your Expert Pool** - Try sequencing priorities or bringing in external help instead of running everything in parallel. - Rachel Cooke suggests training new subject matter experts to widen the pool over time. Transcript: Rachel Cooke Maybe that means breaking priorities into smaller blocks that get sequenced instead of run in parallel. Maybe it's permission to bring in external support, or maybe it's to start training some new subject matter experts. So the pool gets wider over time. ([Time 0:07:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e2b8e1e6-fabe-427d-9a22-38677bf832a2)) - **Conflicting Scoreboards Make Teams Pull Apart** - In a financial services client, marketing targets total revenue while product leaders chase revenue by product line, so each team optimizes opposite outcomes. - Rachel Cooke shows both teams are right but pulled toward different scoreboards. Transcript: Rachel Cooke Then there's the financial services client. Their head of marketing is chasing a total revenue number. Their head of product is chasing revenue by product line. It sounds close enough, right? But it's not because if you're in the marketing organization and your leader is chasing total revenue, then you build the programs to support your best performing products. That's where the fastest revenue lives and you're doing what you're being told. But the product teams, they're looking for marketing to support the underperforming products because that's what moves their leader's number. So marketing and product are pulling against each other every single day. And both teams are right. Both teams are doing their jobs correctly. They're following the direction of their individual leaders. It's just that they're being measured against two different scoreboards. No amount of cross-functional collaboration fixes this. No offsite where we all agree to communicate better fixes this. It has to be rectified at the top, which is the target. Somebody has to answer that. ([Time 0:08:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8564f27d-cb72-4008-b63c-a6ef74f575b0)) - **Structural Friction Is A Hidden Slowdown** - Routine structural issues—open roles, outdated procurement—create constant friction that delays delivery by months. - Rachel Cooke points to 12-body work with only seven people and procurement that delivers four to six months late as examples. Transcript: Rachel Cooke Things like, what do we do when we have aggressive targets, but lots of open roles we haven't filled? And the work takes 12 bodies, but only seven are here. Can we adjust? Can we hire contractors or outsource a piece? Or what about the procurement process that is so onerous and convoluted that anytime we need to make a purchase, the thing arrives four to six months too late. ([Time 0:09:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2544dfc7-c152-4dcc-8752-e0586202a9f4)) - **Listen Synthesize And Offsite To Untangle Knots** - Rachel Cooke's process: interview executives about felt pain, run listening sessions with operators, synthesize findings, then workshop solutions with the exec team. - She uses a one-day offsite to sort, decide what to solve, and build action plans and messages. Transcript: Rachel Cooke It starts with executives. I sit with them and I get underneath their frustration. I ask them, what is the felt pain? Where do you believe you're being let down? Then I go in the other direction. I run listening sessions with the operators, the people actually doing the work. And I'm looking for one thing. Where does it break down between the vision and the execution? Where are the knots? Then I synthesize and summarize those findings and I bring them back to the executive suite. And we spend a day together in an offsite, the executive team and me, and we workshop it all. We look at what the data is telling us. We sort it. What do we want to solve? What do we want to address? And what do we simply want to acknowledge? Because sometimes acknowledgement is the best we have to offer. And then we build the plan, actions, key messages, a real way forward. ([Time 0:10:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/636a1bf3-709c-4637-8a8d-bef7451458b2)) - **Pause And Put Yourself In Their Shoes** - Pause and empathize when teams complain; don't dismiss concerns as shirking. - Rachel Cooke asks leaders to imagine the exact constraint and either coach a clear path or create conditions for success. Transcript: Rachel Cooke Stop pulling, take the beat, and find your knots. Because it's not AI slowing you down and it's not uncertainty. Really it's those knots. So the next time you find yourself blowing off a concern or a complaint from your team, really pause. It may seem in that moment, like someone just not wanting to do the hard work, but just for a minute, put yourself in their shoes. If you were faced with that exact resource constraint or that exact priority conflict or that exact unclear direction, would you know exactly what to do? If so, take a minute and coach them on it. ([Time 0:11:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/98513476-8819-49e6-933b-0337396d54a4))