Pain and Pleasure of Being a Key-Person

80% of every company’s results is delivered by 20% of its employees. Key people. Typically they are already overloaded by now, and will get even more workload tomorrow. But is there a way to prevent a key person from becoming a bottleneck, or from burning out and leaving the company? We suggest using Micromiles methodology and toolbox as a solution.

Not knowing you personally, we can still tell a lot about how you work. You have a bunch or projects and other undertakings under your control. You take responsibility and make decisions. Your to-do list is rather long. If your company stumbles upon an obstacle tomorrow, or if a new opportunity comes along – you are most probably going to be involved as a part of the solution. Today your workload is high. Tomorrow it becomes even higher!

Does it sound about right? Let’s move on then.

At work you are sometimes a bottleneck, since there are just too many things going on that are dependent solely on you. Sometimes you feel tired and demotivated, close to burning out, perhaps. Communicating with people around you becomes hard, you start seeing a career change as a way out.

But if you don’t address the root cause – this will happen again, with your new project, new client, new employer.

What can be done differently?

1. Move away from a variety of different projects to specific goals with well-defined stages on the way towards them.

2. Boost personal productivity by putting your tasks under tight control.

3. Stop trying to do everything on your own – delegate, while maintaining control.

How?

We see that the best solution is to combine a methodology with tooling. In our case, methodology is a synergy of the most advanced techniques for achieving goals and completing individual tasks – with positive psychology. And the whole toolbox is the application we developed, Micromiles.

In Micromiles, you can achieve clarity by visualizing your path toward goals and planning each stage in detail. Task management is GTD® -based (see David Allen’s http://gettingthingsdone.com/, for example), with delegation options that allow reliable tracking and control of work on the way to the common objective.

Perhaps, you have your very own secret, a sacred knowledge of how to work effectively without burning out? Feel free to share!

About the author: Ljubov Bezan is a product manager and an evangelist for Micromiles (the product for building great productivity habits). She has joined Idea Port Riga in August 2012.