EOFY Traffic Jam

When I worked in an Every-THING workplace, I always felt a sense of dread as the end of the financial year approached because of the many looming deadlines.

Each year, there would be a swathe of projects needing to be completed on the last day of the financial year. That long list of action items in our business plan taunted the team.

We had been busy and achieving all year, but frequently knocked off course. To complete these projects they would need to be whooshed through to meet the – sometimes entirely arbitrary – deadline.

And it wasn't just my team’s own projects. There were everyone else's projects too. Even when we were all over what we needed to achieve, others had projects they had not had time to complete because they were also busy.

We found ourselves awash with ‘being engaged’ over matters we'd never heard of before, and our time taken up with meetings and reporting and testing for more projects than you could poke a stick at.

And yet, year after year, the June meltdown continued. Our organisation never learned that an Every-THING culture greatest export is stress and poor work.

So how do you deal with the EOFY traffic jam?