No bonus points for difficulty

This weekend we are pulling a rabbit out of a hat for a client.

That might sound awesome, and in some ways it is. But that rabbit should never have seen the light of day.

The problem is you can’t say yes to one thing without saying no to something else. The cost of saying yes to this particular request was:

1. Engineers that are already tired and stressed had to work through the night.

2. We added more production changes to a weekend already full of complex and risky work.

It’s easy to give ourselves 10/10 if all the changes are completed on time, according to design and tested successfully.

But I would say that’s 7/10.

10/10 would be if we found a way to move some of the changes around to spread the risk and work more evenly over the next few weeks.

In life and business we don’t need to be the hero. THERE ARE NO BONUS POINTS FOR DIFFICULTY.

It doesn’t matter whether you make the change at 9pm or 2am. Or whether you make six changes this weekend vs three each over a couple of weeks.

It does matter that key team members don’t burn out and resign. Usually this happens after a year or two, just as they should be starting to flourish.

As a leader it matters to me that my team members don’t hate their jobs. That they get to see their families and are able to sleep at night.