Books are Voracious Monsters

On keeping one plane flying while you build and launch another one (aka managing major project launches)

Sep 27, 2024

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“Don’t underestimate the time and work it takes to publish a book,” my coach told me last year. “And be aware that it can become a major distraction and drag on your core business operations if you’re not careful,” he warned me.

In deciding to go the serialization on Substack route to put my book out into the world, rather than pursuing traditional, hybrid or independent publishing, I thought I was mitigating these risks somewhat.

And I was. And it has.

And yet.

At Sansu Rising, I have the luck/advantage/curse of being both the CEO, middle management and front line doer. That means I get to make all decisions about where and how I allocate my priorities and time—a privilege most employees don’t have. And I was optimizing for n=1, where the 1 was me and the variables were simply my time, ideas, priorities, commitments, and money. (Or n=3 if we include my family, but hubs and my 14 year-old much prefer it if I don’t try to optimize them and rather leave them to sort themselves out!)

So as optimization problems go, it was theoretically a simple one. And the solution straightforward:

Serve existing clients
Continue business development work (aka future clients)
Do the work to release the book
Eat, sleep and exercise and show up for my family from time to time
Let go of everything else

I remarked ruefully to my husband last week: “I’ve become all work and no play.”

“Yes,” he said, “but it's for a good reason, it’s temporary, and you actually seem to be enjoying yourself.”

And he’s right. I have been enjoying myself—rather a lot actually. I’m not feeling overwhelmed—even though it feels like I’m wrangling a bucking bull a lot of the time. The book was (is!) still a voracious monster that wants to consume all available time. The discipline I’ve had to summon is not to do the work to release the book, it’s to not let it take over everything else!

What has all of this got to do with “building compassionate workplaces?”

Quite a lot!

1. “Business as usual” still has to happen—compassionately.

When launching a major project, people often say, “We just need to slow down.” I had that same thought as I juggled the book and my client work. I wanted to slow the one down to support the other.

But I, like most businesses, don’t have the luxury of hitting pause on core operations. Revenue still needs to be generated, deadlines and payroll met, commitments honored. You can’t just stop flying the plane because you're building a new one.

So what to do?

Balancing business continuity with major project launches doesn’t mean pretending everything can just go on as normal either.

If you’re a larger business, can you create a dedicated “tiger team”, pulling people off their regular work and staffing them solely on the project? If you’re a smaller business, what other work can you temporarily suspend or scale back without impacting core operations. In my case, one of the things I let slide, for instance, was this newsletter, and gardening.

In any business there are the “must do’s” and the “nice to do’s”. Can the “nice to do’s” be slowed down for a while, even while core operations continue? (And no, not everything is a priority. If that’s what you’re saying, you have a different problem).

2. Optimization Requires Slack

Inexperienced project and operations managers tend to fall into a common trap: they believe an optimally efficient plan is one where there is no slack in the plan or the system.

The opposite is in fact true.

The most efficient systems intentionally plan in slack.

Fully allocated systems—where everyone is working at maximum capacity, every machine is going full tilt 24-7—aren't resilient to unexpected challenges. Slack allows for flexibility, whether it's catching up after a delayed meeting or dealing with unforeseen roadblocks.

Compassionate leaders recognize that without some breathing room, without slack, neither people, nor projects, work as effectively and well.

I experienced that just this week. Through mismanagement on my side I had no buffer times (slack) between coaching sessions. And I simply wasn’t as good a coach. I was less present, less prepared, and took longer on my follow-ups. I didn’t get more done. I got less done.

3. Plan for the unforeseen and the unknown

I’m a huge Sci-Fi reader (although I don’t write it), and have recently re-read all of Frank Herbert’s Dune series.

One of the central conceits of the series is that while Paul Atreides can see the future, this makes him both supremely powerful…but also powerless. Paul can perceive many possible futures, but certain events remain veiled from him. He describes it as being able to see far-off outcomes but being blind to what is directly in front of him, symbolized by the "mountains" that obstruct his vision of the "valleys" immediately behind them.

In project planning, leaders and teams often create long-term visions and strategic goals, much like Paul Atreides glimpsing distant outcomes. However, just like prescience, no amount of planning can account for every immediate obstacle or unforeseen detail that arises along the way.

This is another reason why slack is so important.

You can clearly “see” the first big deliverable that may be due. But like a mountain, that big deliverable can obscure what will come immediately behind it. What you can be sure of is that it is something. What you can’t be sure of is what.

Slack in the system helps to make sure that you can still keep within an overall timeline of a project, even while dealing with “what’s behind the mountain”.

I gave myself 6 months to go from getting the feedback from my editor and beta readers to releasing the book. I knew I could go faster, but I deliberately gave myself more time than I thought I needed. And boy am I glad I did! It’s a huge reason as to why I’m not feeling overwhelmed - a week away from the book release. I gave myself the time that allowed me to balance across all 4 priorities: clients, business development, book and life.

Tying it Back to "The Overwhelm Epidemic"

In last month's newsletter, I wrote about The Overwhelm Epidemic—how employees are consistently being asked to do more with less, and how this has become the norm in many workplaces. This overwhelm is often exacerbated by leadership trying to “build the plane while we fly it”, and not building in slack into the system.

“Slack” is not the nemesis of business efficiency: it’s it secret ingredient.

A final word on the “building the plane while we fly it” analogy

Can we ditch it already?

Apart from the fact that it defies the laws of physics (just a minor thing 🤪), time and time again what I’ve observed and experienced is that really it’s just a rationalization for poor management and planning.

And if you think about it, who would ever want to fly in a plane that was built in the air? 🤣 I’m a risk-tolerant adventure seeker, but even I draw the line at flying in planes built in midair!

Build that plane on the ground please, folks, then take it for a test flight. That’s the compassionate thing to do—for both the people building the plane and the passengers you want to put in it!

(And keep your other planes in the air fueled up and well maintained so that they can fly safely too!)

Building Compassionate Workplaces

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