Part 5: What to Do Next
You've completed the assessment. You've reflected. Maybe you've even had a conversation with your team. Now what?
1. Start with the conversation
If you haven't already, bring this to your team. Your observations are hypotheses — your team holds the real data. Don't act on assumptions. Test them.
The conversation is the intervention. Often, just naming what's happening and creating space to talk about it shifts the dynamic. People feel seen. Problems that felt individual become shared. Solutions that seemed impossible become doable when a team tackles them together.
2. Seek evidence-based strategies
The demands and resources in this tool are grounded in work psychology research. If you want to understand more about what you identified, look for evidence-based resources on that topic — academic articles, leadership development materials, or organizational behavior frameworks.
Focus on finding:
- Why this demand or resource matters for performance and wellbeing
- How other leaders have addressed similar patterns
- Specific strategies that have been tested and validated
- Questions that help you apply the concepts to your context
The research gives you the "what" and "why." Your team gives you the "what specifically" and "what now."
For further reading, see: Tschierske, N. (2023). Better Work: A Leader's Guide to Creating Happier, Healthier, and More Productive Workplaces.
3. Experiment small
Don't try to fix everything at once. Pick one micro-intervention and try it for 2–4 weeks.
Examples:
- Cancel one recurring meeting and give people that time back (reduce workload)
- Clarify one key decision right that's been ambiguous (reduce role ambiguity)
- Start a 10-minute weekly round where everyone shares one thing that went well (increase feedback + positive climate)
- Delegate a stretch assignment to someone ready for more (boost task complexity + autonomy + development)
Notice what shifts. Energy? Productivity? Tone of conversations? Quality of work? Stay curious.
4. Track and iterate
This is not one-and-done. Demands and resources are dynamic. What you commit to today might work beautifully — or it might not. Markets shift. Priorities change. People come and go. The system evolves.
Revisit this assessment quarterly.
Ask:
- What has improved?
- What's still stuck?
- What new patterns are emerging?
- Do we need to adjust our approach?
The goal isn't perfection. It's responsiveness. You want a team (and a leadership practice) that can notice when things are off-balance and course-correct before burnout sets in or good people walk out the door.
If You're Stuck
Sometimes the patterns you see are symptoms of organizational issues beyond your immediate control.
Systemic workload from understaffing. Bureaucracy mandated from corporate. Job insecurity from a merger you didn't choose. Budget constraints that limit what you can offer. Restructuring that creates role ambiguity you can't resolve alone.
If that's your reality, here's what you can do:
1. Name what you can't change
Be honest with your team. Don't pretend you have power you don't have. It erodes trust.
Say:
"I can't reduce the workload right now — we're understaffed and that's a budget decision above my level. But here's what I can do: I can protect your focus time, reduce unnecessary meetings, and make sure the work we are doing is the highest priority work."
Naming constraints paradoxically creates more trust, not less. It shows you're being real.
2. Focus your energy on what you can influence
Even when you can't change the big structural things, you can almost always influence:
- Climate — the psychological safety and tone of how the team interacts
- Feedback — how often and how well people know where they stand
- Strengths deployment — whether people are working in their zone of genius or just filling gaps
- Meaning — how connected people feel to the purpose of their work
- Autonomy — how much control people have over the "how," even if you can't control the "what" or "how much"
These are resources you can build even in a high-demand environment. And they buffer. They won't eliminate the strain, but they'll reduce its impact.
3. Advocate upward when possible
You may not have the authority to change systemic issues, but you often have the visibility to name them.
If workload is unsustainable, track it and escalate it. Bring data, not just complaints.
If bureaucracy is slowing everything down, document the bottlenecks and propose alternatives.
If job insecurity is eroding performance, surface the impact to those who do have power to address it.
You won't always win. But silence guarantees nothing changes.
Final Thought
This tool is a lens, not a prescription.
It won't give you all the answers. It won't make hard conversations easy. It won't solve every problem your team faces.
But it will help you see more clearly. And when you see more clearly, you can act more wisely.
Use it. Test it. Adapt it. Make it yours.
And then do the thing that matters most: talk to your team.
Because in the end, the best diagnostic tool you have isn't a framework or a quiz.
It's the people doing the work.
Listen to them.