Do you remember that odd tale of a how a Ladies Hairdresser from Bradford discovered a formula for heatproof paint (probably a mixture made with children’s PVA glue whilst he was attempting to make his own shampoo). The paint could withstand the heat of 1500C (the heat of a nuclear bomb). The product was demonstrated on live TV where he coated a thin layer of paint onto an egg and held a blow torch to the egg for several minutes. Afterwards, he cracked open the egg and the runny egg yoke spilled out.
Despite the formula being literally bomb proof, alas, the inventor passed away taking the formula with him before it could be shared or commercialised.
Thus: Survival supersedes science.
This is a point that Nassim Taleb argues on the basis that survival (risk taking) and science are two different skills. One must first survive before one can prove anything through a methodology like science, despite there being the notion that science is ‘definitive’ and above all else.
I’m going to provocatively make the point that, survival also supercedes agility. Furthermore, I think one of the biggest threats to a team’s survival is ‘burnout’. If survival supercedes agility, then we should therefore deal with burnout before dealing with improving a team’s agility. But I have never seen this happen. Nor have I done this either!
Why is burnout a threat?
Our behaviour is primed for threats and incentives.
The immediate threat for most workers is the loss of a job. Since employment constitutes the main and only source of income for most people, this amounts to a threat to individual survival. People can modify their behaviour to avoid losing a job. Ironically, this behaviour may contribute to another threat: burnout.
The trouble with burnout is that it cannot be objectively calculated – it’s a ‘gray rhino risk’ – a highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat for both the individual and thus also for the business. Therefore people cannot actively prioritize burnout as a greater threat than job loss, even if it’s actually more likely to happen and may have a more detrimental effect for both parties than a job loss.
Incentives may even contribute yet further to burnout: implicit expectations to perform or deliver continuously in a high paced, high stress environment, with the incentive for promotion or pay increase.
Once burnout has happened, however, it can have a detrimental impact on the individual, the team, and the product. Burnout isn’t just temporary nor contained: it also has an impact on the wider business: 40% of tech workers who are at risk of burnout also plan to leave their company in the next six months – it affects a business’s turnover, but may also affect a business’s future recruitment.
A camel’s back does not gradually and incrementally break relative to the weight applied to it
Nor do people incrementally and knowingly burn out. There simply comes a point when someone can’t do it anymore. Herein lies, I think, the clue: as outlined in Byung-Chul Han’s book: Burn Out Society, an enlightening short book that fascinated me when I first read it some years ago. The clue is in the word ‘can’.
In short, burnout is a new phenomenon, that hasn’t really existed before but only in our current ‘Achievement society’.
Psychologically, it’s a change of the dominant verb from ‘should’ (i.e. I should do this) to ‘can’ (i.e. I can do this!) – thus a reflection of our ‘achievement society’ where everything is possible and you can be whatever you want. Of course, no-one can disagree with that? But not everyone can achieve it all.
“Burnout is a rejection of the massification of the positive at a psychological level”. An overheated ego.
A relentless self-inflicted pressure to ‘can-do’. The master-subject dynamic is no longer structural, it’s within us. It’s our own ego pushing ourselves to achieve more and more and more until we can’t / can’t do it. Burn out.
Initial research first termed burnout as: “overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and a lack of accomplishment.”
In a recent survey, 2 in 5 tech workers showed a high risk of burnout. It’s therefore a huge risk to be focussing solely on improving agile and growth metrics, if potentially over 40% of your workforce is at risk of burning out … and no-one knew!
The success stories you hear about are not the most agile teams – they’re most agile teams that survived.
I’m starting this conversation because when working with teams, I find it difficult to know if someone may be at risk of burning out, and I believe as coaches, scrum masters, managers, business owners, we should be doing something about this actively.
Neal Taylor is aiming to continue this conversation in a Workshop at the Global Scrum Master Summit, in May.
Come along here and let’s figure out what we can do: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/burnout-trumps-agility-workshop-tickets-303322625137
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This is a summary of the conversations that I have had with friends and colleagues over the past few weeks: you may see your own thoughts here, and I thank you for your permission to relay them further. (Special thanks to: Mike, John, Matt, Jeremy, Richard, Rob)
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Burn out society- – Byung-Chul Han
The State of Burnout in Tech
Gray Rhino – Michele Wucker
One interesting example of incentivizing to maximise productivity and counter burn out: Gumroad: “We also have an “anti-overtime” rate: past twenty hours a week, people can continue to work at an hourly rate of 50 percent. This allows us to have a high hourly rate for the highest leverage work and also allows people to work more per week if they wish.”