Struggling with team underperformance and burnout?
(5-minute read)
In the high-stakes arena of life science marketing, we’re not just competing for market share, we’re grappling with a complex set of issues inside and outside the company. While we love what we do, our day-to-day work comes with what seems like an endless stream of surprises, fire drills, and stress. These conditions make it hard to discern how to best drive performance while not driving others to burnout. We get caught up in the immediacy and often struggle to see the underlying pathology. Our default is to throw more things at the problem, only adding fuel to the fire.
Surprisingly, this approach to dealing with underperformance and potential burnout runs counter to the natural cycle of things. In order to thrive, we miss that in times of turbulence and chaos, we need to take things away rather than add more things on. If we look at how “life” cycles through itself (for example, a tree), we see it tends to follow a progression through a series of change stages1: Creation (when something new begins); Growth (when it starts to form and expand); Maturation (when it gets more complex and systemized); Turbulence (when complexity can no longer be supported); Chaos (when the system begins to fall apart); Unloading (when the unnecessary starts to drop off); and Dormancy (when the system quiets and resets itself). Then, the cycle begins again. Our business life, as well as our personal life, typically follows the same natural progression. We run into performance issues and team burnout when we get “stuck,” particularly as things become more turbulent or chaotic.
What change stage are you, your team, and the business in?
We chose working in life sciences because we want to make patients’ and other customers’ lives better, and we want ourselves and our teams to feel joyful, connected, and fulfilled along the way. Dealing with today’s volatility, uncertainty, and complexity requires the perspective and skills to create, sustain, and alter the systems in which we work and live. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, wrote, “The only thing that is constant is change.” Yet, most contemporary leadership and management thinking tends to be more mechanical, treating us as parts of a controllable machine rather than organic in a dynamic, ever-changing ecosystem. For sure, there is little guidance for business leaders, capability-builders, and individual marketers on how to navigate today’s global, social, and digital world to thrive and live a good life.
Solving the Performance Equation
Our best practice knowledge and real-world experience helped us at Lime decode the ingredients for sustaining a thriving organization or team. These ingredients are the catalyst of “life” in life science marketing work. Ingredients that connect, motivate, and help patients and other customers we serve. Ingredients that engage, inspire, and enable marketers and other internal stakeholders to have meaning through their work. We synthesized these ingredients into our Lime Life Science Marketing Performance EquationTM. Let’s look at each variable that helps solve the performance equation:
Time (T) No matter who you are, there are only so many hours in a day. As we seek to drive performance, we have to treat time as a very precious, finite resource. It’s rare that “more time” is the answer, as it has to be sourced from somewhere else. As leaders, we must be mindful of how our teammates are spending their time. As individuals, we must be protective and ruthless in how we deploy our time to achieve business and personal goals.
Clarity (C) Clarity means declaring the few things we want to focus on. It requires us to determine what will make the biggest difference, make choices about what to do (and not do), and ensure everyone is aware, aligned, and acting upon these choices consistently. Making effective choices means we have to make sense of our market and customers—the priority customer needs-based segments, the points in the customer journey our strategies and tactics are aimed at, and a deep insight about the hidden why our customers do or believe what they do. It requires both skill and courage to choose, say no, and then remain focused and steadfast even as things around us are noisy.
Efficiency (E)Efficiency means we can achieve our goals and strategic intent by leveraging the resources we have in the best way possible, with little to no waste, effort, or energy. It’s about being orderly and organized for the thing we control so that there’s space for the things that are out of our control. We’re not recreating the wheel each time we do something, and people doing similar work use the same language, tools, templates and approaches, continuing to share and improve over time. Leaders are helping create a predictable rhythm and scalable systems across marketers and their internal partners. Individual marketers thoughtfully engage in the right work at the right time creating or using replicable approaches. Priorities are acted upon or renegotiated, conversations and meetings move things forward without churn, and projects are well managed.
Self-Care (S)Self-care means we have the capacity—that is, the energy, attitude, knowledge, and skill—to do what we’re doing over the long term. While self-care has come into business discussions of late, it’s typically treated as a separate idea, not something inextricably woven into leadership or marketing practices or training. Yet, as we can see in the equation, self-care is an exponential function. When self-care is done well, it dramatically increases performance; when it’s neglected, performance significantly wanes even if Clarity or Efficiency is somewhat present. Ironically, when pressures rise, self-care is usually tossed to the side. We don’t take time to build our skills or learn new things that can help, we neglect healthy sleep, food, and exercise needs, and delay taking a break or stepping away to give space for new perspectives and mental health. Leaders must be attuned to their team’s “skill, will, and fill,” that is, do they have the ability, attitude, and capacity to navigate rapidly emerging demands. And each of us must champion our own health and ensure we are nurturing our cognitive and professional development so we’re the best version of ourselves.
We’ve found that when trying to improve individual or team performance, don’t try to tackle each variable in the equation all at once. Reflect on which variable is most underdeveloped and start there with small, doable actions that you can expand upon over time.
Example of a Lime Treatment Pathway to Turn Around
Team Underperformance and Burnout
1
Define what the company sees as critical for marketer success and make professional development a non-negotiable priority
2
Using flexible, on-demand resources, focus marketers on key practices that lead to greater strategic clarity and efficient execution on their business
3
Help marketing leaders reduce churn, influence stakeholders, and provide air cover and coaching tailored to individual needs
Do you have the proven ingredients to solve the Performance Equation?
Check out our Lime Performance Equation Playbook for techniques to create capacity for yourself, your team, and your business.
If you’d like to brainstorm or learn how we’ve helped other leaders with this challenge, reach out to schedule a free Let’s Grow! session.
1 Adapted from: Hallbom, K. (2020). The universal cycle of change. Retrieved February 1, 2024, from: https://krishallbom.com.
