Episode 123: Don’t Improve the Symptom Before You Address the Source


Long lines at the airport last week gave me a timely reminder of a leadership problem I see everywhere at work.

Leaders sometimes fix what’s visible instead of what’s broken. The result is just better optics, not better outcomes.

There’s a reason this topic is hitting a nerve. Asana reports that knowledge workers spend 60% of their time on “work about work,” and Microsoft reports that employees are interrupted every two minutes by meetings, emails, or pings. That is not a time-management problem. It's a prioritization problem.

Why it matters:

  • Teams are drowning in coordination instead of doing skilled work
  • Interrupted days create slower decisions and more rework
  • Optimization without prioritization drains energy and capacity

What you’ll learn:

  • How to spot optics versus outcomes
  • Why broken systems create meeting and email overload
  • How to identify the real bottleneck
  • What to eliminate before you optimize

P.S. If your team needs help reducing meeting load, protecting capacity, and building better systems instead of better workarounds, let's talk about relentless prioritization.

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