Your team is busy. Deadlines are moving. Emails are answered. Projects have updates. By any visible measure, things are happening — a lot of things, all the time.
And yet, somehow, the work that matters most doesn’t seem to be moving. The big goal sits in the same place it sat last quarter. Initiatives get started and quietly fade. People are stretched, but somehow nothing quite crosses the finish line.
Here’s the thing about a team like this: the effort is there. Nobody’s coasting. Nobody’s short on commitment. The hard work is real — and that’s exactly why it’s worth making sure all of it is pointed at the right things.
When work doesn’t move the needle, it’s rarely because people aren’t trying. It’s usually because no one is actively directing and coordinating the work — making sure the effort happening every day is the right effort, aimed at the right goals, at the right time.
That’s a manager’s job. And it’s a question of direction, not of effort.
A Self-Check, Not a Performance Review
Let’s be clear about what this is and isn’t.
This isn’t a performance review of your team. Your team is doing what teams do: working hard and doing good work. This isn’t about finding fault with anyone — not the team, and not you. It’s a quiet, no-shame, no-blame look at how the work is being overseen.
When work has drifted, it’s a sign that the work could use better direction. That’s all. No blame, no scolding, no “who dropped the ball.” Just an honest look at how you steer the work — and a way to steer it better.
So here’s the invitation: a quick self-check on how you direct and coordinate the work on your team.
The Self-Check: Three Questions
The whole thing comes down to three questions. If you can answer them honestly, you’ll know whether the work is being aimed well — and exactly what to do about it if it isn’t.
1. Can you see the work?
The first question is the simplest, and it’s the foundation for everything else:
Do you actually have visibility into what’s on your team’s plates right now?
Not what you assume is happening. Not what people tell you in passing. Real, current, see-with-your-own-eyes visibility into the work that’s actually in flight.
Here’s the thing about work that lives in heads and inboxes and side chats: it’s invisible. No one can check it, and no one can redirect it, because no one can see it. The work that’s most likely to drift is the work that isn’t in a shared, visible place.
The fix: put the work somewhere everyone can look. This is where a work-tracking tool comes in — and for my money, Asana is the best fit for most teams. The specific tool matters less than what it does: it gives you a single, shared picture of what’s actually happening, instead of a hundred different versions living in a hundred different places.
You can’t direct work you can’t see. So step one is making it visible.
2. Can you check the work?
Visibility alone isn’t enough. You can see everything and still be looking at the wrong things. So the second question is:
Is the work in flight actually aligned with your goals?
This one has two preconditions, and you need both:
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Goals have to exist first. If there are no goals, there’s nothing to check against. The check starts upstream — with a clear sense of what you’re actually trying to accomplish.
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Then the work has to move a goal forward. Not “this feels related to the mission somehow.” Does this specific piece of work move this specific goal forward in a real, tangible way?
How you check this depends on the size of your organization, and that’s okay.
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For a small team, it can be as simple as a gut check — a quick, honest “does this line up?” It’s subjective by nature, and that’s fine when the whole picture fits in one head. The point isn’t to build bureaucracy; it’s to ask the question.
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As the team and the work grow, a simple scorecard — a quick way of rating each piece of work against the goals — keeps the check honest and consistent. Asana makes this easy to look at, since each task sits next to the goal it serves.
The point isn’t perfection. The point is making sure you have some mechanism — however light — for asking: is this the right work?
3. Can you limit the work?
Here’s where things usually fall apart, and it’s the question most of us never think to ask:
Are too many initiatives in flight at once?
Everyone has their core work — the day-in, day-out stuff that just has to get done. That’s not what this question is about. This is about the additional initiatives on top. The extra projects, the new priorities, the “let’s also try this” items that get layered on.
Here’s the telltale sign it’s too much: progress is slow, everywhere, all at once. Every initiative is moving a little, and nothing is really getting done.
That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a focus problem. People spread across ten things don’t finish anything — they just churn. People focused on two things actually complete them.
The fix: scale down. Cut the number of initiatives in flight, so each one has a real shot at getting finished. Here’s the counterintuitive part: you actually finish more when less is on the plate. People stay focused, work their piece all the way through to completion, and then pick up the next thing. Fewer plates, more completions — and the team goes home knowing they actually moved the needle, instead of knowing they touched ten things and finished none.
Run the Check
Here’s your scorecard. Rate yourself honestly, 1 to 5, on each question.
QuestionScore (1–5)If you scored below a 3…Can I see the work in one shared place?☐Put the work in a visible, shared tool — Asana works well. You can’t direct what you can’t see.Can I check the work against real goals?☐Make sure goals exist first, then gut-check or scorecard each piece of work against them.Can I limit the work in flight?☐Cut new initiatives down to the few that can actually finish.
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No shame, no blame — this is just information. Wherever you scored, that’s your starting point.
The Work Is There. The Direction Is the Skill.
The teams I’ve seen make the biggest leaps aren’t the ones that suddenly started working harder. They were already working hard — that was never the problem. They were the ones who started seeing their work clearly, checking it against what mattered, and cutting out everything that was keeping them from finishing.
Your team has the effort part down. That’s the easy part, honestly — it’s the default.
The skill is making sure all that effort is pointed somewhere that matters.
That’s the check. That’s the whole job. And it starts with one honest look at the work in front of you.
Read the full article on Substack →
From the SmartWork Bulletin