Too Busy Is Not A Strategy: 7 Reasons Leaders Say It And What To Do Instead

So today's topic is something pretty near and dear to our hearts, because to be completely frank, we do hear it a fair amount as an excuse for a variety of things. And that is two words. Too busy. All right, I'll make it four words. I am too busy or we are too busy. Lots of times we hear it in, well, we can't do that now. Now's not a good time. We'll do it later.

Because right now we're too busy. As if somehow, magically, later people won't be busy. But we find it disingenuous. Not that people are lying about it. Well, sometimes they are. But there's a host of reasons behind the I'm too busy that are the real reasons why somebody says, I'm not going to do this thing, this new thing, this idea, this whatever. Too busy. And as you like to always say, well, maybe I'll let you say it.

Okay, well, thank you. So I'm a little too busy right now to get to it. But. So if, you know, the big whale client that you'd always hope to get came and said, we think we now want to start doing business with you, but by the way, we're going to have to make sure you can do some of these product revisions. We're going to have to make sure you can do the capacity we want. We need to test out some of the delivery mechanisms, but it's going to be worth a fortune. But it's going to take a lot of time right now to make it work. No business goes, ah, sorry, we're too busy now.

Why don't you come back in a couple years when, you know, we're freed up and available to have a new business.

Yeah. When things calm down.

When things calm down.

Because right now we've got to work on our budget, which has a big hole in it. Which has a big hole in it, you know, and we got the board meeting coming up, so, you know, that's, that's tough. And, oh, by the way, it's end of year.

Yeah. Yeah.

And there's the holidays.

We'll put out a sign when we're. When we're welcoming new clients.

Yeah. And our people are just. Are really, really stretched, and it would be scary for us to ask them, you know, to do this right now. They might get really upset and some of them might leave.

Any of the people who say to us, I'm too busy, if some subordinate of theirs said, oh, I turned down this piece of business because we're too busy. Big Important piece of business. I don't think they would cotton to that.

He double toothpicks to pay, as Radar O'Reilly might have said.

Okay.

Okay. All right. So what do we think are the real reasons behind too busy, why people say no to new things?

So the first one, which might be considered the least nefarious, I don't know if that's fair, but is they don't actually know how to prioritize very well. So they've made all these decisions that. Plus inertia. They've made all these decisions to do things. They are truly busy. That is a true statement. There does not appear to be excess capacity to do the new thing. And they always think the new thing is on top of everything else they've already decided to do.

Rather than have a very nimble, easy to use prioritization that says, you know what? We're going to put this one in, we're going to put this player in, but we're not going to have 13 on the field. We're going to take a player off the field. This would be for, you know, American.

Football, 11 for European football, five for basketball.

Oh, my God, how many?

Nine for baseball.

How many sports do we have to go through? Let's see.

I'm done now.

One for ping pong. I don't know if it still works. Tag team wrestling. I don't know. There are always things that should be stopped. Zombie projects that should have been killed anyway, meetings that are too many, nobody likes them, they should be stopped anyway, or just work fills the time. And if you add something on, people figure out how to chip away at the other thing. So anyway, people do not corporations and people do not have nimble ways to prioritize what they're doing.

So they feel comfortable taking out something and inserting something new. That's better.

People would benefit. People, corporations, whatever, would benefit from the Eisenhower time matrix.

Yes.

Wouldn't they? Would you like to describe that?

Sure. So the Eisenhower time matrix. And you know, he was used to working on many important things simultaneously, both.

In World War II, say, life or death.

Life or death? Yes, in World War II. And as president, he essentially had this idea that on one axis of the matrix, is, is it low value or is it high value, essentially, or is it necessary or unnecessary? And then on the other axis, is it. Does it feel urgent or does it not feel urgent? And the things we typically work on are the things that feel urgent, whether or not they're important. So it feels urgent, but it's not important. And a Lot of our life gets consumed with those things. There are a lot of things that are important that don't feel urgent. Like going to the gym doesn't feel urgent to do that today. And so I don't do it today, tomorrow, this year, next year, and then I'm out of shape and unhealthy.

Depends who you are. I think it's pretty urgent for our colleague Gordon, who misses two or three days a year, this is true.

But for many of us it could be super important, not feel too urgent. And so what he wanted to do is make sure people focused on what was important, regardless of whether it felt urgent or not. And that's true in businesses. Being able to say, well, this project we've been working on for a year isn't actually going to grow our earnings. It's just everyone thought it would be a good idea to do for sort of long term benefit, but whereas this other thing that we could do now would make sure everybody got bonuses this year, increase morale, customers would love it and it would add to earnings.

So more important, we're too busy the next one, which is also. It's not nefarious, exactly, but it's not, it's. It's dishonest. Yes, basically it is, we're going to say conflict avoidance, which a couple of these are actually, but that is that they don't believe in whatever the new thing is. They don't believe it will work, they don't believe it has, you know, the value, but they're not willing to say it. It's just easier. It's easier to say we're too busy and, you know, we'll look at this again in a year. And everybody knows that when things get punted down the road, it is very rare that they get picked up.

So it is just an easy way of saying no.

Yeah. Particularly if a boss says, oh, I think this could be important. What do you guys all think? And instead of challenging the boss and saying, it's not going to work, you're wrong, you're an idiot. It's better to say, yeah, yeah, I could see the value, but you know, right now it could be risky. We don't want to take the risk because we're so busy, so let's wait until we can do it the right way.

We witnessed a great reaction to that one time we were selling a project, we were in the room with the CEO and his exec team and this is very rare, but he asked them what they thought in front of us, which was actually great. So that if there were, you know, misconceptions or, you know, just whatever objections, we were there to understand them and explain. So he says, what do you all think? And one guy said, I think now's not the right time. We're too busy. And the CEO said, okay, now's not the right time, but do you have another way of growing our earnings by tens of millions of dollars? I think he said a specific number, but I'll leave that off. And, boy, the guy, he was. First of all, he was very embarrassed, but, you know, was kind of like, well, no, I don't. So.

So it's like saying, you know, we don't have time to grow our earnings. We're too busy. What are we too busy doing?

You're running alongside our bike.

Yes, right. We're. Yeah, that's right. We're so busy running alongside our bike, we don't have time to get on it.

Yeah.

Okay. Now the next one is similar to the disbelief. It won't work, though. That might be founded in, you know, an honest view of the thing, but you're not, as you said, you're not willing to be honest, to have a real discussion and be challenged about why it might work or figure out why it might work. This one is, you're just scared of the new thing. Maybe the new thing, it's going to be hard to sell to your people, or maybe the new thing disrupts the delicate plans you've already put in motion to accomplish something or whatever. Maybe the new thing will expose something about what's going on in your organization that you'd rather not have exposed. Not because you're not willing to try to deal with it at some point.

You'd just rather deal with it not in front of your. The CEO, and, you know, your. All your peers.

That's a very specific new thing that you're talking.

Well, that. That was an example of an actual thing. Yeah. So if you're scared of the new thing, you don't want to get up and say, well, no, I'm scared for the following reasons. It's, again, just a way for everyone to say, okay, we're. Yeah, we're probably too busy now. And the thing is, sometimes what you're scared of is it's just like not believing it won't work. You're scared of it because you don't actually understand it.

And if you were honest enough to raise it and have a discussion about it, you might discover that your fears are completely misplaced.

Yeah. And of course, we know this happens Every day. Not just in companies, but in, in real life where people don't understand something. Sometimes they might not know that they don't understand it because we don't know what we don't know. But they oftentimes we do know we don't understand it, but we are too embarrassed to ask. We think we should. This is definitely corporate behavior. We think we should.

I mean, we talk about this with TLAs, three letter acronyms. You know, there's lots of times, I mean, we've been engaged in all these conversations recently in sort of a new world, and oh my God, TLA is coming at us fast and furious. And we, we just, we say stop. What, what does that mean? And then they tell us and we go, oh, of course, sure. But hard to understand things if you don't know what the TLA stands for. But so, yes, people often just will not reveal that they don't understand something. Okay, so our next one is pretty nefarious. I guess some people are just really impressed with themselves being busy.

It's a badge of honor, they think, particularly in the. I'm going to blame our generation a bit. It was seen as a badge of honor. You know, you work hard, you work long days and you work weekends and you just work, work, work, work, work. Whereas the younger folk do not see it that way. They are much more life, work, life balance, focused. But there are still plenty of us around and they keep bringing. That.

You know, it is still the badge of honor to say, oh my God, I've just, I've got to go here and I've got to go there, and then I've got this trip and then I have to make this speech and I have to do this and this and this and this and this. And so I have no time, I'm too busy. And it's, it's because you think that presents a cool, impressive look. So that's a bad one.

Yep. And then the last one in, in some ways a little like you don't think it'll work or you're scared of it, is. It's a note, it's a, it's a acceptable excuse in lieu of the real reason, which is you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. And so the person who's presenting this new thing, whatever it is, maybe have done it with great passion. They may have even done it, started formulating it at your request. They may clearly be very deeply engaged with it. And you just don't want to say, no, no, don't like that. Idea, bad idea, let's move on.

It's so much better to say very interesting idea. We really should put the. Let's park this. How many times have we heard let's park this.

Let's put a pin in this or table it.

Oh, okay.

Which as we know means save it for later in the US but means let's talk about it now in the.

UK and so just better to say but right now. Just can't do it right now. It's again, instead of being honest communication and getting things out on the table, it's a acceptable excuse that people don't pierce or challenge which they should pierce it or challenge. Well, too busy doing what? What could we stop doing? What could we do less?

This is definitely a fall over. A A no. What's it. I don't know what the word is I'm looking for. But in. In our personal lives. Right. It's very common.

Oh, do you want to come to this event? Oh, I'm, you know, I'm busy that night.

Oh, yeah.

If you aren't because you don't want to, you don't want to just say no. We're, we're, we're not, we don't, we don't do well at just saying no to people in general. As a, as a culture, it is just easier to make stuff up.

It's a lovely invitation, but I'm too busy getting in my pajamas, sitting on the couch with a pint of ice cream, rewatching a movie. I've seen a dozen.

I mean, it's fair to say I have plans. And those are your plans?

Those are my plans.

We recently offered to someone they could do a really good thing for their organization was literally going to take people 15 minutes that and was free and was free and we were told we're too busy.

Right.

So really I. And we don't know which one that was. I mean maybe just poor decision making.

I would say the they didn't know how to prioritize. Well, actually, we don't know. We don't know because we also know in that case there was some doubt at the senior levels whether, you know, I don't want to talk about too much what it was but anyway, whether something was believable that of course they should have believed and wouldn't want to say to their, to their teams what they really, really thought.

I mean and this is the problem with too busy. We don't really know. And it's hard to know. But if you're the one saying it, try to be honest about why you are saying I'm too busy with yourself and with whoever you're telling. But work on prioritization. Don't make the default answer no, which happens with a lot of people. It's just the easier answer is no. So instead of making the default no, think about it from the perspective of the Eisenhower time matrix and learn how to prioritize and let go of what we call zombie projects.

I would also say instead of using the word we're too busy, give the most thoughtful fact based answer to the following question. What would we truly have to drop in order to do it now? Not a political answer that says, well, maybe we should just tell our salespeople to stop selling. I mean that's just to be sarcastic. But what is the least important thing we're doing that could be deferred or not done so that the trade. It's not we're too busy, it's we have a trade off to make. Is this a good trade off? Another, another possible thing. If you think you're too busy now but you know in the future you might not be fine, commit to a time when you're going to do it in the future. Budgets, commit to things, strategic plans, commit to things.

M and A work commits to things that are all in the future. Say, you know what, we're too busy now because we're going through X, but January 1st we're going to start it.

Yes, that's good. And I'll leave with two quick things. We once had a, I think it was a CFO tell their, you know, their exec, their larger exec team, the management team, 100 ish plus people. Yeah, we know you've got full plates, but you're going to have to get a bigger plate.

Right?

What, I mean, what a horrible thing to tell people. And first of all, how. Oh, so just work 24 hours. Yeah, but you know, so really, absolutely everything was a priority. If everything is a priority, nothing's a priority.

Exactly. Yeah.

The thing, and then the other thing that, the other saying that I think you don't mind as much as I do is if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Gh it's just so unfair really. I mean I, I get the concept. They're the doers, they manage to get things done. So maybe they're organized, they're all those good things. But you know, don't have, don't have three go to people that you just load up because you know, they're workhorses and get things done.

1. 
   

Think about the priorities.

Now you know we're too busy to continue.

That's right.

To get onto other things. All right, bye. Thanks for listening. To learn how Harvest earnings helps large companies overcome the bad practices, Visit our website, harvesternings.com or email us at infoarvesternings.

Also, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a rating and a review. It really helps others discover the show. Until next time, I'm Terri Long.

And I'm Jeremy Eden. And now it's time for us to get back to work. Bye.