What’s Slowing Your Team Down (Even When Everyone Is Busy)
The Cost of Being Different vs. the Cost of Team Operational Drag
In this article, you’ll learn:
Why more meetings and messages don’t automatically improve team productivity
How team operational drag quietly erodes momentum without obvious failure
The hidden cost of coordination overload on managers and executives
Why working differently feels risky—and why not changing costs more
What executives can do to restore flow without asking teams to work harder
Don’t Ask: “Why Should We Work Differently?”
Ask: “What Is the Cost of Continuing Exactly as We Are?”
Most productivity conversations begin with the wrong question:
Why should we change how we work?
A better one is this:
What is the cost of continuing exactly as we are?
Recent findings from the National Bureau of Economic Research give executives a rare advantage, not because they introduce something new, but because they confirm what many already sense.
Today’s default way of working has already changed.
Quietly.
Unintentionally.
And expensively.
The Shift Already Happened, We Just Didn’t Name It
The research shows a clear pattern:
More meetings
More internal emails
More people involved
Longer workdays
None of this was intentionally designed.
As I discuss in my work on the status quo, this is how outdated operating models persist—not because they’re effective, but because they become normalized.
“We didn’t choose more meetings, more emails, or longer days. They emerged.”
Remote and hybrid work altered the mechanics of work.
But norms didn’t update.
Decision rights didn’t sharpen.
Communication expectations didn’t mature.
So teams compensated with coordination:
Meetings instead of clarity.
CCs instead of ownership.
Availability instead of focus.
The cost didn’t show up as failure.
It showed up as team operational drag.
The Real Risk Isn’t Standing Out, It’s Team Operational Drag
Executives hesitate to work differently for understandable reasons:
Looking rigid
Missing information
Slowing collaboration
But those concerns obscure the greater risk.
The bigger risk is not noticing how much momentum is leaking out of the team.
In my writing on risk reward, I emphasize that the most damaging risks aren’t dramatic—they accumulate quietly.
Team operational drag looks like:
Decisions taking longer than necessary
Executives becoming unintentional bottlenecks
Strategic thinking squeezed between meetings
Longer days without compounding returns
This isn’t a performance issue.
It’s a capacity cost across the team.
The Cost of Being Different vs. the Cost of Team Operational Drag
Here’s the reality executives must face:
The cost of being different is immediate.
The cost of team operational drag is cumulative.
Being different may mean:
Fewer meetings and early discomfort
Clearer communication norms and short-term friction
Protected focus time and habit disruption
But team operational drag feels deceptively safe—until progress slows.
Maintaining the Status Quo | Working Intentionally
Feels familiar>Feels uncomfortable at first
Hides coordination cost>Makes decisions visible
Consumes executive’s attention>Preserves team capacity
Appears collaborative>Compounds outcomes
Team operational drag doesn’t announce itself as risk.
It disguises itself as productivity.
This Is a Leadership Decision, Not a Productivity Tactic
Productivity isn’t about doing more.
It’s about how teams move work forward.
When executives reduce unnecessary meetings, clarify ownership, and protect focus, they aren’t managing calendars—they’re shaping how work flows across the team.
That signal determines whether effort compounds—or stalls.
Closing Thought
The question isn’t whether being different has a cost.
It’s whether executives are willing to keep absorbing the cost of team operational drag.
📘 Want to Go Deeper?
These ideas are explored in greater detail in Capacity: The New Advantage, where I unpack how status quo work patterns quietly tax team capacity, and how small, intentional shifts restore momentum without adding effort.
If this article resonated, the book provides the lens and language to act on it.