Elementum

Burnout and Capacity Read.

Read how deep and wide the burnout runs, then face the honest fork of whether a sustainable pace is even possible with the current team, because if the essential work genuinely exceeds the people, no pace plan will hold, and the real answer is staffing and money.

Use it at the start of the burnout guide, before designing any changes.

Part A. Read the burnout

Where is the exhaustion, and how deep: a hard patch, or people at the edge

How wide: the whole team, or a pocket

Who is closest to leaving or breaking

Part B. Weigh the work against the people (the fork)

Is the exhaustion coming from how the work is organized, too much friction, too little focus, no boundaries, which you can change? Or from there being more essential work than people to do it, which you cannot change by reorganizing?

Be concrete: if you cut every avoidable task and protected every boundary, would the essential work fit the people you have?

The verdict, in one line: sustainable with changes, or genuinely overloaded

The rule: if the verdict is genuinely overloaded, say so out loud and route it to the staffing and funding work, because the choices there are add capacity, reduce scope, or raise the money, and no pace plan substitutes for them. You can still do the protective work to ease immediate harm, but do not tell a team the pace is now sustainable if the load has not actually changed.

Your answers stay in your browser on this page and are never sent anywhere. Use Save or print to keep your copy.

Back to Address Burnout and Build a Sustainable Pace, or start over from the welcome page.