A true story of love, loss and renewal.
Are your star performers burning out?
Welcome to Teamory Work Fables - short stories that share the real life lived experiences of people in our network with simple lessons to help us all learn, improve and grow.
Our first fable is all about a high achieving legend who loves her work, the feeling of
massive loss and renewal. Names have been altered to protect identities.
Meet Hannah - she’s worked at ZYX Co for 11 years. Her role gives her an immense sense of purpose and pride and she gives it her all....
Then things start to change. It all begins one day when Hannah is on a long drive back from a customer meeting and she’s reflecting. Hannah’s been giving her job everything and although she enjoys the financial rewards that come with being a high performer, for a while now, she’s been getting very little recognition. The role demands a lot of Hannah in both her work and personal time. She’s burning out.
Then, all of a sudden, ZYX propose an organistional restructure (or reorg). Given her immense workload, for Hannah, spending most of her time side by side with clients, the whole process is over very quickly. The restructure has resulted in a breakdown of community, her leadership support group is gone and for the first time in her career, Hannah feels adrift. Hannah remembers that she was recruited to be a critical part of the sales function. She was promised support, a team and guidance. She was promised unobstructed and clear channels of communication to decision makers.
These promises and the story she was told when joining have over a few months drifted into a nightmare of working within a dysfunctional team.
Things were never perfect but this new normal sees more product issues, regularly changing and replacing managers, a lack of teamwork, firefighting as usual instead of business as usual and people going off the radar - later to tell everyone that they’ve quit. The work environment that was once focused on wellbeing and healthy living has become toxic.
It's a stressful environment to work in and the stress sends Hannah to hospital. Burned out, stressed out and ill. For the first time in her career, Hannah is faced with an impossible choice - stay and risk herself while securing her legacy, or leave and save herself while leaving her legacy in the hands of a dysfunctional team.
The decision is massive and difficult because Hannah loves her work and finds it deeply fulfilling. Working in the field that she’s in, Hannah can see what an immense difference she’s making to other women’s health and lives. Her customers love her and the work and service she delivers. This is reflected in her numbers, always above target, big contracts always renewing and with new customers always on the horizon. She is motivated by making a difference - this work is her legacy.
But something gets lost between how Hannah is experiencing it and how others in the organisation see it. Her leadership see her as a diligent, hardworking and secure person. In their mind, she’s high potential and low risk so they leave her to it. She feels like her contribution is invisible and the sacrifices she’s making to sustain high performance are not valued. Ed, her former manager and most vocal advocate left as a result of burnout following the organisational restructure. Jasmine, her customer and dearest friend for life can see how difficult all of this is on Hannah.
Hannah gets out of hospital and knows that she’s resilient so has a go at fixing things. It turns out to be an even heavier load to carry on top of what she’s already got on. Speaking to HR and leadership, the only reply she gets is that she’s resilient and that she's struggling with coping with the changes from the restructure. Hannah’s managers have changed twice in as many months. She can see herself slipping back into burnout so she sits at her desk on a cold January morning and drafts a resignation letter.
She is filled with a deep sadness, Hannah feels like she has no other choice but to resign. Sitting at her desk, looking over her resignation letter, she sees how all of her hard work and commitment, sacrifices, wins and impact all hang in the balance. On the one hand she can carry on and keep trying and fix the things that have been causing her burnout. Unsupported, this will most likely lead to burnout again. On the other hand - she’s too burned out and wants to find some time for recovery, rest and reflection before making her next career decision.
She submits her resignation letter to the manager, leaders and HR. She feels an immediate rush of emotion. Equal parts relief that this painful saga is coming to an end and excitement that she will find somewhere she is valued, that new and better adventures are out there. Then the sadness is back, largely due to the fact that she’s having to leave behind many deep relationships that she’s invested in over many years.
For her colleagues, this resignation is unexpected and a huge shock. They always felt that she was the content, independent, high performing start that they could rely on to bring in the numbers. Her new manager doesn’t know how to respond. Panicked by this sudden resignation, he reacts without thinking as he’s far too busy and launches into crisis management mode. A rushed process finds a successor who is already burning out, overly process driven, full of self doubt and can’t see the value of investing in relationships.
Three handover meetings get put into diaries. Long, arduous, tedious meetings in which her new manager and someone from HR rush an interrogation of Hannah about her work. To them, they need to capture as much as possible. To Hannah, these 'work things' mean so much more. These outputs, outcomes and relationships have been meticulously nurtured and cultivated with care and diligence over years.
The handover meetings focus entirely on information about the accounts, products, customers and reports. This information is already stored in their systems. To get through handover they just need someone to point to it in a single document and outline what ‘work needs to be done’ to sustain the accounts.
Hannah retains the 'real and valuable stuff' like insights behind why accounts are doing what they are, relationships and how certain customers are like close friends while others are like problem children, visions about where new growth can come from, how customers see Hannah as a key player in helping them score goals, game plans on how to manage an imperfect product set while competitors circle and the very narrative behind how Hannah was able to join, rise to becoming a star performer and most importantly, what caused the story to come to the decision to leave. Hannah, once the star performer, has now become another person that needs to be quickly ushered out. Devalued and dehumanised, her work is handed over. Box ticked.
Notice period over in a flash, Hannah leaves.
After a few restful, regenerative and replenishing weeks, Hannah finds herself at her new employer. It is in the same industry, slightly different vertical so not a direct competitor. At an international conference she bumps into Ron, a former colleague from ZYX. Ron tells her that ZYX have failed to capture any of the opportunities for contract renewal and account growth that Hannah had captured in massive detail. That’s £3m of new business that her successor not only failed to land but has opened up to ZYX’s direct competitors. Jasmine a key decision maker at a leading hospital, one of Hannah’s previous customers, and still very good friends tells her of how poorly mismanaged the account has become, forcing her to seek a new supplier. Hannah feels betrayed. Jasmine and Hannah have spent many long years forging meaningful progress into an important field of women’s health. Hannah blames herself but Jasmine reminds her that this disaster could only have been averted at great cost - Hannah’s own health.
The knock on effect is devastating. Hannah hears from former customers, colleagues of Jasmine that because of problems with ZYX, their own workload has significantly increased. Competitor products and services are subpar in comparison and the increasing costs of this work have meant that the hospital is forced to close down the department. Jasmine has had to find new work and luckily finds a role that is in the same field but much further away.
Conclusion
In pursuing ‘streamlined’ and ‘efficient’ organisational restructuring the reality delivered for Hannah has been that the legacy of her hard work over many years has been largely torn down, her customers have been let down and women’s health has experienced another set back in that particular local area.
How you can avoid such stories within your organisations:
Go big on 'why' and 'so what': Clearly communicate the 'Why' behind big decisions and crowdsource support, understanding impact at individual role level
Taking care of colleagues: With colleagues permission, within agreed boundaries, try to pay careful attention to your colleague’s lives outside of work.
Include customers in crowdsourcing: Nobody wants to be the last to find out about a big change, especially if you're receiving a product/service. Customer centricity starts with involving customers in the big decisions.
Create an environment that celebrates visibility and balance: Colleagues that feel like their contributions are visible, valued and to be protected will always perform well.
Give people reasons to stay and make time for appropriate responses to resignation: People resigning doesn’t always mean that they want out. It could just be that there’s nothing to keep them in.
Get connecting: Resilient and successful teamwork is less about the individual and more about sharing stories, memories, collecting data and connecting the dots.
If aspects of this story seem familiar to you or a colleague please let us know by filling out this short survey.
If you'd like to share a work fable - please contact us at info@teamory.co