When Small Problems Become a BIG Problem

The Problem Accumulation Problem

Small problems may not seem serious enough to call for any action. Although workloads increase, people cope with them. Even though staffing levels decrease, the operations go on. People grow tired, but the work still gets done. Communication slips. Morale erodes. People stop feeling as supported as they once did. None of it, taken alone, looks catastrophic. It is then that the comforting statement tends to find its way into the way organizations think: "It's not that bad". And in fact, no individual element of the situation is serious. The real issue is what occurs when people have to face all of these problems together.

Why We Separate Them Anyway

There are valid reasons why organizations arrange problems in this manner. Large organizations require departments, a division of responsibilities, and a system of reporting in order to function at all. One body looks at staffing, another at satisfaction, a third deals with compensation and yet a different process is used to assess performance. This is how organizations manage complexity. Yet people do not go through their jobs along these administrative lines. An employee does not complete their experience of a staffing shortage before beginning to feel the effects of a heavier workload. A difficult relationship with a manager does not vanish just because someone starts to worry about their working hours. Such matters overlap. Many years of research into occupational stress have demonstrated that employees are confronted with a number of demands and resources at the same time, and that the balance between these influences strain, motivation, and well-being (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). The organization chart separates the problems, whereas people do not.

What Surrounds the Problem

That distinction matters, because a collection of tolerable problems can add up to an intolerable one. Take an employee facing an unusually heavy workload. Under the right circumstances, that's manageable: strong leadership, supportive colleagues, enough resources, some flexibility, real recognition, time to recover. Now alter the circumstances surrounding it. The level of the workload remains high, but the staffing is inadequate. Support becomes more limited and it becomes harder to find time for recovery. People begin to feel less appreciated and opportunities for promotion start to seem out of reach. No one single factor can account for what happens afterwards; it is the cumulative effect that does. Researchers who have studied workplace stress have observed the same pattern: several stressors build upon one another rather than acting separately, increasing strain in ways that no single stressor would by itself (Nixon et al., 2011). It is only when you look at the other factors involved that the true extent of a problem becomes apparent.

A Better Question

That raises another question. It is natural for organizations to ask, "How serious is this issue?" This is a reasonable question, but it tends to cause leaders to evaluate each concern separately. A more appropriate question would be: "What overall experience is being created by all of this?" This does not mean that every frustration should be treated as if it were a five-alarm fire, nor does it involve making up connections that aren't there. Rather, it is about opposing the idea that a number of moderate concerns are harmless simply because none of them has gone over a certain threshold. The research into turnover supports this view: what causes people to leave is seldom a single factor, but rather a cumulative effect of increasing demands, decreasing support, and a changing attitude towards the job (Hom et al., 2017). Effective leadership involves recognizing the individual problems and, from time to time, stepping back far enough to see the overall environment that these problems are producing together.

The Warning

The warning for leaders is simple. An organization doesn't need one catastrophic failure before the overall experience starts to break down. A workplace can keep running while employees quietly absorb several weaknesses at once. People adjust, for a while. They work harder. Teams cover the gaps. Managers have to come up with temporary solutions and employees tend to believe that the situation is only temporary. From the outside, all appears to be going well. This outward appearance may be deceptive. The fact that there is no one overwhelming problem does not mean that there is no serious problem at all. Frequently, the real danger lies in the buildup, namely, the stage at which several manageable issues start to reinforce one another until, together, they become unmanageable. Organizations almost never fall apart one problem at a time.

References

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands-resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115

Hom, P. W., Lee, T. W., Shaw, J. D., & Hausknecht, J. P. (2017). One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 530–545. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000103

Nixon, A. E., Mazzola, J. J., Bauer, J., Krueger, J. R., & Spector, P. E. (2011). Can work make you sick? A meta-analysis of the relationships between job stressors and physical symptoms. Work & Stress, 25(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2011.569175