What’s Fueling Burnout in Your Organization?

Ask these four questions.

by

Rob Cross,
Karen Dillon,

and

Martin Reeves

by

Rob Cross,
Karen Dillon,

and

Martin Reeves

October 04, 2023

Jacobs Stock Photography Ltd/Getty Images

Summary.

Many people believe burnout is driven by excessive work demands. In fact, it’s driven by a specific type of demand–work that requires too much collaboration between individuals or teams of employees. To reduce this collaboration overload, ask these four questions: Can we reduce structural complexity? Does our workflow make sense? Hasthe profusion of teams spiked employees’ microstress? And have we built a sense of purpose in our employees’ everyday interactions?

Organizations around the world are experiencing unprecedented levels of burnout, which is creating a significant — and under-recognized — cost to organizations in the form of quiet quitting, reduced innovation, and even spiraling healthcare costs. Many people are quick to point to an increase in overall workload as the culprit. But our research shows that the work itself has not increased so much as the collaborative demands of the work.

Rob Cross is the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and a senior vice president of research at the Institute for Corporate Productivity. He is the coauthor of The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Add Up—and What to Do About It (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023) and author of Beyond Collaboration Overload (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021).
Karen Dillon is a former editor of Harvard Business Review and coauthor of The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems — and What to Do About It (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023). She is also coauthor of three books with Clayton Christensen, including the New York Times best-seller How Will You Measure Your Life?
Martin Reeves is the chairman of Boston Consulting Group’s BCG Henderson Institute in San Francisco and a coauthor of The Imagination Machine (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021).

What’s Fueling Burnout in Your Organization?

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