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Alison Beard
Welcome to HBR on Leadership. I'm HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard. On this show, we share case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, Hand selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. We carefully curate this feed from across the HBR portfolio, aiming to help you unlock your next level of leadership. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Sarah Green Carmichael
Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review. I'm sarah green carmichael. Launching a new initiative is one way a manager can make their mark in a new job or show their value at a company they've been at for years. So it makes sense that more and more managers across industries might be piling on more and more new projects. The downside, though, is that more and more work gets saddled on middle managers and frontline employees. Workers are getting overwhelmed.
Michael Watkins
When you have large organizations and lots of different people wanting to make things happen, the ripple effect all the way down is where it simply becomes almost impossible to keep up. And with all good intentions, people want to support these initiatives. They're great ideas. They're simply too many to be able to support to the right level.
Sarah Green Carmichael
That's Rose Hollister. She and Michael Watkins looked at how companies like a Fortune 500 retailer ultimately suffer from overloading their employees like this. They're the co authors of the HBR article Too Many Projects, and both consultants at Genesis Advisors. Rose and Michael, thank you for joining us today.
Rose Hollister
Great to be here.
Michael Watkins
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Sarah Green Carmichael
So has initiative overload always been a problem, or are initiatives more popular now?
Michael Watkins
We think that initiative overload is becoming more of a Problem. We think it's been a problem, but we think it's escalating. And we think it's escalating for a few reasons. One, organizations over the last five to 10 years have gotten leaner, and so they cut costs. Usually one of the main ways to do that is by cutting headcount. And then usually what doesn't happen is that they don't change the work or cut the work to fit the cut in people. The other thing is that if you think about it, year after year, a department or a function wants to do something better. They want to launch something, so they start something new this year, something else next year, and the following year. And large departments might launch many initiatives, and that happens over an entire organization. And then there are legacy initiatives that have been in place for a long time that maybe should be stopped, but haven't been.
Sarah Green Carmichael
Is this just kind of like every executive has to have his initiatives that he's running or she's running?
Rose Hollister
This is a part of the problem, and it's not uncommon. A leader only has a couple of years in a role. They want to make a mark. One way to make a mark is to launch a signature initiative, right? And this is also a great example of what we call the magnifier effect, right? Which is you may have executives individually launching a few initiatives, but then there's some critical level at the organization, in this case the store managers, where it all comes to a focal point and people literally get burned out by everything that's kind of coming down towards them.
Sarah Green Carmichael
It's interesting because there is, like, you know, mathematical equations that support that, too. Right? It's like if you look at a road, traffic's flowing smoothly, and then all of a sudden you just get a couple more cars on that road than the road can bear. You have a traffic jam.
Rose Hollister
Exactly.
Sarah Green Carmichael
Sounds like the same thing.
Rose Hollister
Very similar. But I think also just to understand that those executives that you mentioned earlier that are launching those signature initiatives, that's happening in all the departments, and they're all trickling down. But where implementation needs to happen often is at focal points where it all kind of comes together. And so a couple of initiatives from each department can translate into a dozen, right. At the level of something like the store manager.
Sarah Green Carmichael
So I just want to ask why simple sort of prioritizing techniques don't seem to work here? Because this is something where I know in my own career, when I felt overwhelmed, my boss has said, well, I don't expect you to keep every ball in the air, just the Most important ones. And some things will drop, and that's fine. And these are your priorities and just do them. Why doesn't that kind of conversation help?
Michael Watkins
I think the problem is, as Michael said, there are so many different functions or departments, all with signature important initiatives. So if marketing has their initiatives for the year, if it has theirs, if HR has theirs, if operations has theirs, and I could go on and on in big organizations, they might be doing multiple big initiatives. Well, they usually prioritize in silos, and they say, we're going to do these 5 or these 10 or these 20. Well, that happens in every single function. And what usually does not happen is a senior leadership team saying, let's look at all of these. Let's look across the enterprise, what Michael and I would call a balcony view. Let's get on the balcony. Let's look at. Let's not just look at the dollars this will take. Let's look at what the hours it will take for people to either learn this, support this, execute on this, sustain this. That kind of inventory usually is not done and somebody can juggle. But there are so many things coming at them that prioritizing isn't enough at the team leader or employee level. That prioritizing has to happen, should be happening at the senior team level.
Rose Hollister
I love your example because you had a boss and you had a reasonable boss, and I want you to imagine you had three bosses, none of whom were reasonable, all shooting things at you, maybe with conflicting priorities, all asserting that it's really important that you do this work today.
Sarah Green Carmichael
Oh, that sounds like a nightmare.
Rose Hollister
Right? And that's what really does it. It's both the number of channels that things are coming at people through combined with a really a lack of attentiveness to what people reasonably can accomplish.
Michael Watkins
Well, and just to build on what Michael said, that reasonably accomplished, depending on the culture, it might not be culturally okay to say we're at our limits. And people fear saying, I can't do more, or they've tried it and they haven't gotten heard. And so I think there's also a we can do this. Let's work harder, not more. And well, that only works when there's a reasonable amount of things on the plate.
Sarah Green Carmichael
So if senior executives are somewhat clueless to what, to what the havoc that they're wreaking and people are either afraid to speak up or aren't heard, then how do companies know if they're creating this problem?
Rose Hollister
Well, I think that's a really big problem, which is often they don't right. This is something we call impact blindness. That basically, you know, senior management does not have sufficient visibility into the cumulative impact that the executive team is having on people at lower levels. Maybe they're not paying attention. Maybe they don't want to pay attention. Maybe they've got their own agendas they're pursuing. But the net impact is they do not really have visibility into what they're doing to the organization. And the organization will survive doing this for a while, and then the cracks will begin to start showing.
Sarah Green Carmichael
When those cracks start to show, what do they look like? Is it decreased engagement? Is it turnover? What is it?
Michael Watkins
It's decreased engagement. It's turnover. It's people leaving for other jobs. There was a SVP that we were in an interview with, and he was a leader at a human resource consulting firm, and he said, I love this organization. I love the work. I love the team. The pace is unsustainable. If I stay here, I will have a heart attack. And he left and he found another role. I was just talking to one of my clients, and they had gotten in their engagement survey, they had gotten scores about that work life balance wasn't where they wanted it to be. And as they unpacked that and said why, it wasn't that managers weren't flexible and weren't saying, yes, take care of your home life, your children, those things. It was that there were simply too many initiatives going on for people to be able to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.
Rose Hollister
Yeah. I would add that this sort of thing can work okay when unemployment is high. Right. And people are worried about their jobs and they're worried about saying things. But when you start to get into a full employment situation and people have lots of opportunities, the real risk is you're going to lose your best talent.
Sarah Green Carmichael
And is that because the good people have more options or because the good people are the ones who tend to be the most overloaded with a million initiatives?
Rose Hollister
Yes, to both. Right. I think it's both things. Right. One is that they tend to bear the brunt. Right. Your high performer tends to get more loaded on them, which, of course can generate some resentment because other players are not doing the job and they have options. And so they look for places that are gonna appreciate them and modulate the workload better than where they are.
Sarah Green Carmichael
How do companies usually try to solve this problem? And does that work?
Michael Watkins
Well, typically, first of all, they say, by function, let's go prioritize. And so the marketing department says, okay, here's what's Top for us. Here's what we're doing. Let us lead on our initiatives. And that happens across every other function, whether that's finance, whether that's it. That typically doesn't work because there's not an understanding of the impact. Now there was someone that we know that looked at his organization and realized this was an issue. And he asked every senior leader of this organization, the C suite, to come to a three day meeting. And as their homework, they had to bring every initiative that was happening under there oversight. What was the business case for it, what was it taking in people time and then how did it meet? Two screens. One, to support the building of the business, the growth of the business, and second, to support customer satisfaction. Now that C suite took three days. They looked at every single initiative and as a group they said, we won't do this, we won't do this, we won't do this. Then they reallocated resources from the things that they weren't doing to the key initiatives. But at the end of the day, they significantly decreased the number of initiatives across the enterprise. When someone does that, the whole organization wins. And the business results gave proof to this that because looking down the road, customer service scores did go up, the business did grow, and people looked back on that three day retreat as a turning point in the organization.
Rose Hollister
Yeah, I would add a couple of things to that too. Right. That's potentially a highly conflictual process. Right. That's a really difficult process of making trade offs between people that really want to drive certain things in their organizations. Second thing is you've got to be very careful about interdependencies between things. Right? You can stop this and it turns out it really impacts that. And so you've got to be willing to think through those interdependencies. And then once you've decided to kill something, you actually have to kill it. Right? I mean, we see these zombie initiatives, right, that they sort of rise from the dead because they've got an agenda associated with them and people find little hidden pockets of resource or think they do to try and pursue them.
Sarah Green Carmichael
So usually when projects don't die or stay dead, leaders get blamed by employees and kind of, you know, employees who feel kind of disgruntled and kind of like, ugh, like you know, management never kills any of these projects. But I know that from talking to leaders. Leaders feel like employees won't stop doing these, the work. I mean, and they're, it's sort of each side kind of blames the other camp.
Rose Hollister
Yeah, I, I've been doing some work with a big pharma company, R and D. Right. And I think I've seen this very much happen because people get very identified with projects. Right. They begin to think their employment may depend on certain projects being pursued, or they really strongly believe that this particular drug is going to change the world. And so there's resistance to this notion that we're actually going to kill something. Prioritization, really prioritizing and really making it stick. That's really hard.
Sarah Green Carmichael
So as a leader, how can you deliver that message convincingly and compassionately?
Michael Watkins
I think part of this and one of the things that we find is there needs to be better dialogue going both ways. There needs to be an understanding from the people who are being asked to execute on this initiative, what's the true impact? Or if we're stopping it, Are there pieces of this that are related somewhere else? Because in big organizations, as Michael said, there are so many interdependencies that stopping something, maybe you can stop 85%, but maybe another department is depending on this 15%. And so part of this is more robust conversations about what will it mean to stop and what's the plan to stop it.
Rose Hollister
You need to recognize that really doing this kind of prioritization and winnowing across an organization is a kind of change management exercise. And change management exercises tend to work best when you start with the why, why are we doing this? What are the benefits? Right. Rather than just jumping straight to the what or the how.
Sarah Green Carmichael
So clearly it would be better to prevent this problem from occurring. What are some of the questions that leaders should be asking before launching initiatives to avoid this kind of thing?
Michael Watkins
I think the example for me would be if I just say, I'm going to buy a car and I budgeted for my car. Well, I'll go and buy that car. But if I can't afford the gas, if I can't afford the maintenance and the insurance, I can't really afford the car. Well, I think for a lot of initiatives, we get the initial funding, but we don't understand all the peripheral things that are needed in order to support it for the long term. So it's understanding, will this initiative truly solve the problem? Did we do enough homework to understand whether this isn't just a bandaid, but it's actually the right answer? And then if it is the right answer, have we truly looked at the costs and does it make sense with all the other things in the organization? Is this truly one of the priorities? One of the quotes we really like is From Steve Jobs that says that we all need to get better at saying no to hundreds of really good ideas.
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Sarah Green Carmichael
what about the sort of. I think of it as the closet cleaning approach, where for every new piece of clothing you buy, you have to donate an old piece of clothing or give it away. I mean, can you take the same approach with initiatives or is that just too rigid?
Michael Watkins
It might be like, let's say that I buy a wool coat, but I give away a pair of socks so they're not quite equal.
Sarah Green Carmichael
Like you can't see into my closet.
Michael Watkins
So I think that where it's a nice idea to add an initiative, take one away, I think it's about how, what will it take for the organization to support this initiative? I used to, when I was running the team at McDonald's, I used to ask my team about once a quarter, what are we doing that we could stop doing and no one would notice? We also one year took the time to say for everything that we're delivering, what does it take in time to deliver it? And we got a really amazing sense of if we were doing a high potential officer program, what did it take us in hours to support that? And we did that across every single program we ran. And then when we sat down to plan for the following year, I had all these great ideas. I wanted to start this. I wanted to start this. I wanted to do this. And my team who had been working with me tracking it, said we have 15% free time. That's all. So if you want to start these things, are we going to get other resources? Are we going to stop doing some other things? We had done our homework to truly know what it took to deliver. Most times we're all just working so hard. We don't really know what it takes to make something happen.
Sarah Green Carmichael
If you're talking to people at the C suite level, what's sort of the most important thing you'd want them to take away when they're thinking about initiatives in their company, either starting new ones or finding ways to cut back?
Michael Watkins
I would really encourage the C suite to get an inventory to truly understand across the enterprise, what are the Projects, the initiatives that are currently in place. And then what I see pretty much every year with the budget process is new initiatives are added to that. So before any of those things are funded for the C suite team to take enough time to say, what are we already doing? What of those things do we keep? And then what do we add?
Rose Hollister
As you're thinking about doing an inventory and looking at what your organization is doing as a senior executive team, don't just look top down. Start at the base layer of your leadership and management, the people managing your frontline contributors, and take a very hard look at what's happening there.
Sarah Green Carmichael
Once you've done the inventory, what does success with initiatives look like?
Rose Hollister
Yeah, I think it's an important point, right. Which is that success in doing this doesn't just mean that you're sort of funding what you're doing better. Right. It also means you can do things that really are going to contribute powerfully to what is going to drive the business forward. So there's a combination of benefits here. I mean, sometimes you'll see as a part of doing this exercise that there's this little jewel of initiative that really isn't getting the support it needs. Right. And, okay, we're going to put some resource into that. Sometimes it's this thing is a dog, right? We're going to kill it and we're going to make sure it stays dead. And sometimes it's a, hey, this means we can do this. We can pursue something that's really pretty exciting.
Michael Watkins
I think what we find is that when companies do fewer initiatives, the most important ones finally get the support they need, because people have the time, they have the focus, they have the energy to really move that initiative forward. The fewer they're doing, they're doing those fewer much better. And so instead of every initiative getting to move things two steps, one or two big initiatives can move things significantly farther forward.
Sarah Green Carmichael
We've talked a lot about handling initiatives that are kind of pushed down onto you. But I'm also wondering about the way that sometimes managers reach out and grab initiatives that maybe they shouldn't. It has happened where sometimes managers will say, oh, gosh, my team needs a piece of that project, or my team needs a seat at that table. And suddenly you're contributing to initiative overload, even though you know it's a problem. So how can you resist that urge to kind of horn in to a project where you feel like maybe you should have a seat at that table even if you don't have time?
Rose Hollister
Yeah, there's a question of managerial maturity here. And unfortunately, not all managers are mature. Right. They're not able to distinguish between those things that they should be doing or more importantly, committing their people to be doing, because that's often where the cost rests. Right. As opposed to what are all the lovely little pies I'd love to have my fingers in?
Michael Watkins
In some ways, I believe this is at the heart of it. We all want to be involved. We all want to be well thought of. We all want to be showing that we're making progress and improvements and making things happen. And we have limits. And so I think that's the challenge here, is what's the highest and best use of my time? Yes, I'd love to weigh in on that project with everything else we're being asked to deliver. Can we. Sometimes the organization is pushing us to do it. Sometimes it's we are part of the problem because we want to be in there and we put ourselves forth for volunteering for this or being a part of this. And we're the ones that sometimes cause our individual initiative overload.
Sarah Green Carmichael
So if you're just a middle manager or individual employee, is it realistic that there's something you could do to fight initiative overload at your company?
Michael Watkins
I'd say start with your own area, look at what do we have on our plates, and then be realistic with what does it take not to just support our own initiatives, but what are our interdependencies? And then working to say, what can we limit? Can we get additional resources? Are there things we can stop doing? Can we move the calendar out? So when I think about this at a middle manager, what I really think about is that locus of control. What does that middle manager? What are they able to impact? What are they able to influence? Because they can start with their area, Part of this is also making sure that they've had the conversations. I worked with somebody for years who was very well thought of and people kept saying, give him this new responsibility, give him this new area. And this came up year after year. And his response was always, I will take that on when I get the resources. And as an employee, I was like, can we say no? Is that okay? I felt bad. I thought, oh, we'll figure it out. But what I realized is that his answer was the right answer, not just for our function, but for the organization.
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HBR on Leadership will be back next Wednesday with another hand picked conversation from Harvard Business Review. This episode was produced by Mary Dew. OnLeadership's team includes Maureen Hoch, Rob Eckart, Erica Trexler, and Ian Fox. If this episode helped you, please share it with your friends and colleagues and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. While you're there, consider leaving us a review when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books and videos with the world's top business and management experts, find it all@hbr.org.
Date: April 8, 2026
Host: Sarah Green Carmichael (HBR)
Guests: Rose Hollister & Michael Watkins (Co-authors, “Too Many Projects”; Consultants, Genesis Advisors)
This episode explores the phenomenon of “initiative overload,” where well-intentioned efforts to launch new projects eventually overwhelm organizations, especially middle managers and frontline staff. Drawing on case studies, research, and practical leadership experience, Rose Hollister and Michael Watkins unpack the root causes, symptoms, and potential fixes for initiative overload, emphasizing the need for enterprise-wide prioritization and honest dialogue on workload capacity.
The conversation offers practical strategies for leaders at every level to identify, prevent, and address this growing challenge in modern organizations.
Initiative Overload is Growing:
Over the last decade, organizations have become leaner, cutting headcount without reducing the amount of work or initiatives (03:18). The result is a continual layering of projects without retiring old ones.
“There are legacy initiatives that have been in place for a long time that maybe should be stopped, but haven't been.” — Michael Watkins [03:18]
Signature Initiatives as Status:
New leaders often launch “signature initiatives” to make their mark. While individually plausible, the cumulative effect across departments cascades onto frontline teams.
“A couple of initiatives from each department can translate into a dozen, right. At the level of something like the store manager.” — Rose Hollister [05:06]
The Magnifier Effect:
The compounding nature of multiple departments’ projects overwhelms the focal points of implementation (e.g., store managers), much like a traffic jam caused by a few extra cars (04:18–05:06).
Siloed Priorities:
Departments prioritize independently, and senior leadership rarely takes a holistic or “balcony view” of all initiatives and their collective demands (05:54).
“That prioritizing has to happen, should be happening at the senior team level.” — Michael Watkins [06:53]
Cultural Barriers:
Employees often feel unable to admit they’re at their limit due to cultural norms or fear of not being heard. The “just do more” ethos is unsustainable in the face of relentless demands (07:42).
Hidden Dangers (Impact Blindness):
Senior leadership often lacks visibility into the cumulative impact of their strategic decisions on employees (08:21).
“Senior management does not have sufficient visibility into the cumulative impact that the executive team is having on people at lower levels… the organization will survive doing this for a while, and then the cracks will begin to start showing.” — Rose Hollister [08:21]
Symptoms:
Talent Risks:
High performers are both more burdened and more likely to leave, especially in tight labor markets (10:11).
Ineffective Functional Fixes:
Functions often reprioritize projects internally but lack enterprise-wide coordination, so load-balancing fails (10:46).
What Really Works:
Some organizations have held retreats where all C-suite members present every initiative, evaluate impact, and ruthlessly cut nonessential projects (11:51).
“They looked at every single initiative and as a group … significantly decreased the number of initiatives across the enterprise … the business results gave proof … customer service scores did go up, the business did grow, and people looked back on that three day retreat as a turning point...” — Michael Watkins [11:51]
Challenges with Killing Projects:
Change Management Required:
Deliver prioritization decisions compassionately, starting with the “why,” not just the “what” or “how” (14:56).
Robust Conversation:
Engage in honest dialogue about interdependencies, what stopping an initiative means, and how to do it thoroughly (14:15–14:56).
Ask Hard Questions at the Start:
Steve Jobs Quote:
“We all need to get better at saying no to hundreds of really good ideas.” — Quoted by Michael Watkins [16:27]
Closet Cleaning Approach:
Swapping initiatives 1:1 seems neat, but not all initiatives are equal; true assessment of effort is needed (17:12).
Management Practice:
Michael Watkins describes asking his team quarterly, “What are we doing that we could stop doing and no one would notice?” and tracking time spent on each project for realistic capacity planning (17:24).
For Executives:
Develop a true inventory of all ongoing initiatives and honestly evaluate which to keep before approving new ones (18:51).
“Before any of those things are funded for the C suite team to take enough time to say, what are we already doing? What of those things do we keep? And then what do we add?” — Michael Watkins [18:51]
Start Bottom-Up:
Look not just at top-down priorities but what’s happening at the frontline and management layers for a realistic picture (19:27).
Success Looks Like…
Fewer, better-supported initiatives that truly contribute to strategy and business results. Sometimes it’s about freeing resources for overlooked, high-potential projects (19:51).
Managerial Maturity:
Resist the urge to volunteer your team for initiatives they don’t have bandwidth for; focus on the highest and best use of your people’s time (21:42–22:05).
For Middle Managers and Individuals:
“His response was always, I will take that on when I get the resources. … his answer was the right answer, not just for our function, but for the organization.” — Michael Watkins [24:16]
Initiative Overload Explained:
“There are so many different functions or departments, all with signature important initiatives ... prioritizing isn’t enough at the team leader or employee level. That prioritizing has to happen, should be happening at the senior team level.”
— Michael Watkins [06:28, 06:53]
The Cracks Begin:
“The organization will survive doing this for a while, and then the cracks will begin to start showing.”
— Rose Hollister [08:40]
Leaders Struggling:
“I love this organization. I love the work. I love the team. The pace is unsustainable. If I stay here, I will have a heart attack.”
— Michael Watkins recounting a client story [09:13]
Killing Projects Isn’t Easy:
“We see these zombie initiatives … they sort of rise from the dead because they've got an agenda associated with them and people find little hidden pockets of resource ...”
— Rose Hollister [12:36]
On Saying No:
“One of the quotes we really like is from Steve Jobs: we all need to get better at saying no to hundreds of really good ideas.”
— Michael Watkins [16:27]
Self Awareness:
“There's a question of managerial maturity here. And unfortunately, not all managers are mature. Right. They're not able to distinguish between those things that they should be doing ... As opposed to what are all the lovely little pies I'd love to have my fingers in?”
— Rose Hollister [21:42]
Wise Refusal:
“I will take that on when I get the resources. ... his answer was the right answer, not just for our function, but for the organization.”
— Michael Watkins [24:16]
This episode delivers a clear message: Initiative overload is deeply rooted in organizational culture, structure, and leadership habits. Fixing it demands not just better prioritization, but top-down awareness, open communication, and disciplined decision-making. By taking honest inventory, involving all levels in discussions, and ruthlessly killing ineffective projects, organizations can restore bandwidth, focus, and energy—unlocking the full potential of both people and initiatives.