The Loop

Every week, close one loop.
Fix one friction. Take back a bit of time.

Compensation is a silent killer.

It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t trigger an alert.

It shows itself as a team that’s busy, mostly hitting deadlines, and somehow always a little behind.

The meetings are full. The Slack is active. The work is getting done.

But if you look closely, the same three people are cc’d on everything. Every decision routes through one person’s approval. And the workarounds that started as temporary fixes six months ago are now just… how things work.

That’s not a functioning team. That’s a compensating one.

The difference matters. A functioning team can scale. A compensating team is already at capacity, they just may not know it yet.

Two mistakes leaders make:

Mistake #1: They read the signals as individual performance issues. The person who’s always behind is seen as disorganized. The person cc’d on everything is seen as a bottleneck. But these aren’t personality problems. They’re system problems wearing a person’s face.

Mistake #2: They wait for a visible breakdown to confirm something’s wrong. But by then, 'the cost has already been paid'. The good performer who quietly stopped caring. The client who noticed before leadership did. Compensation doesn’t fail dramatically. It erodes.

Three moves:

First: Track decision revisits. Pick one project in flight. How many times has a “decided” thing come back to the table in the last 30 days? More than twice means the decision isn’t sticking. That’s a handoff problem, not a people problem.

Second: Find who’s filling gaps versus who’s flagging them. In compensating teams, the most reliable people absorb the most unowned work. That’s why they burn out first. If your best person is the one who always “figures it out,” ask what they’re figuring out that shouldn’t need figuring.

Lock-in: Map the workarounds. Ask your team one question: “What do you do regularly that isn’t in your job description?” The answers will tell you exactly where the system is leaking and who’s been quietly patching it.

10-minute challenge:

Pick one recurring agenda item that’s been in your team’s standup or meeting for more than three weeks.

Ask: why is this still here? Is it because the work is ongoing, or because the decision never actually finalized? That distinction tells you whether you have a workload issue or a handoff issue.

Forward this to someone who leads a team.
​The diagnostic only works if someone’s willing to look.

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