Today, during an Operations Management lecture at the Eastern Institute of Technology – in reference to our current topic of interest (“capacity”) – I spoke about the fact that every person/ individual in the world has finite capacity.
In the context of the work place environment, students were taught the importance of monitoring the capacity of particularly those people who prove themselves to be highly competent contributors. Why ?
Often it is these people who:
- say nothing as more and more work piles-up on their plate – and they certainly don’t grizzle about the growing mountain of work in front of them.
- tend to be highly-driven, motivated by achieving successively higher income levels to an extent; but also often because they really enjoy their chosen vocation – as it challenges them to apply themselves
- don’t recognise any “glass ceiling” being in place above their head, and are in pursuit of “self-actualisation” (i.e. wanting to find-out what they’re truly capable of as a human being)
…BUT…they are also the kind of people who can suddenly come crashing-down (suffer from “burn-out”) simply from taking-on too much work and/ or trying to sustain a high level of work output for a prolonged period. When this happens, it can cause significant upheaval within the organisation simply because the overwhelmed person played such a key role in driving a significant function.
So, without “micro-managing” these people, responsible managers should be determining ways of looking-after such high-performing people…particularly if they want these people to be a part of the team far into the future.