Optimizing Capacity in Teams: Why How Work Is Designed Matters More Than How Hard People Work
Optimizing team capacity for better performance
Making Teams More Productive
Most teams aren’t struggling because people aren’t working hard enough.
They’re struggling because capacity isn’t being intentionally designed.
Think of capacity like a dishwasher.
A dishwasher has a fixed amount of space — that’s its capacity.
What determines how well it performs is how it’s loaded.
When items are stacked randomly, not all items come out clean.
When they’re arranged with intention, everything gets done in one cycle.
Work operates the same way.
Your workday has a fixed capacity too — whether it’s a predictable 9–5 or a schedule shaped by others. You can’t expand it. But how you load that day determines whether work flows or drags.
That’s where design comes in.
Design isn’t about having total control of your calendar. Most executives don’t.
Design is about how you stack your day, how effort, decisions, meetings, communication, and focus are arranged within the time you already have.
Even when others dictate parts of your schedule, you still influence:
where your best effort goes
what gets handled reactively
what compounds progress
and what quietly drains capacity
When work isn’t designed with at least 80% intention, capacity isn’t optimized by default; not because people are careless, but because no one has stopped to arrange the work deliberately.
And that’s when familiar problems start to show up.
The Problems Teams Are Facing Right Now
1. Busy Teams, Low Momentum
Teams are constantly moving, yet outcomes feel underwhelming.
Effort is spread thin across too many priorities, so nothing compounds.
What’s really happening:
Work is being loaded based on urgency, not return.
A different approach:
Shift from managing time to paying attention to where effort actually produces progress.
2. Meeting Overload Without Clarity
Calendars are full, and with a lack of preparedness in most meetings, more meetings need to be scheduled.
Meetings multiply, yet alignment feels fragile.
What’s really happening:
Meetings are consuming capacity instead of preserving and creating more.
A different approach:
Clarify what each meeting exists to move forward and what doesn’t need to be discussed at all.
3. “It’s Faster If I Do It Myself” Work Style
Executives carry more than they should because explaining feels slower than doing.
What’s really happening:
Short-term speed is quietly limiting long-term capacity optimization.
A different approach:
Treat delegation as a way to invest in team member capabilities, not just offloading tasks.
4. AI Adoption That Creates Whiplash
New tools arrive faster than teams can absorb them.
Leaders sense fatigue even when efficiency improves.
What’s really happening:
Human capacity isn’t being considered alongside technology.
A different approach:
Strengthen clarity and shared understanding before adding more tools to the mix. Also, discover individual Change Capacity with each team member. I cover this in Chapter 5 of my book.
5. Decision Fatigue at the Top
Executives are making more decisions, more often, with less space to think.
What’s really happening:
Constant context switching is draining cognitive capacity.
A different approach:
Small, intentional pauses protect clarity and improve decision quality without slowing momentum.
Why Optimizing Capacity Works Better as a Team
Individuals can improve how they load their own day; and that matters. But the real return shows up when teams approach capacity together.
When only one person changes how they work:
meetings stay the same
expectations stay fuzzy
urgency still drives the day
When a team shares a common way of thinking about capacity:
effort aligns
decisions move faster
communication tightens
and progress compounds
This isn’t about everyone working the same way. It’s about designing work from a shared understanding, so capacity isn’t lost between handoffs, meetings, or shifting priorities.
I’ve witnessed first hand a 25% improvement in productivity when a team works with a shared understanding.
That’s where teams experience a higher return, not by doing more, but by doing the work differently, together.
Explore Further
If this way of thinking resonates, you may want to explore a few related ideas:
read Productivity Gains: Why Remodeling Work Styles Is the Next Competitive Advantage
read The 60-Second Rule: Use Small Pauses to Regain Direction
read 3 Signs Your Team Is Operating at Capacity, But Not at Their Best
Each builds on the same principle: capacity improves when work is intentionally designed.
Where This Work Came From
These ideas — capacity, effort, and design — grew out of years of working alongside leaders and teams, watching how work actually unfolds when calendars are full, decisions are constant, and expectations keep rising.
Over time, clear patterns emerged. Not in how hard people were working — but in how work was structured, how effort was spent, and where capacity was loaded reactively instead of intentionally, despite good intentions.
Those observations shaped my work and ultimately led to my book, Capacity: The New Advantage. The book brings together years of insight into a practical way of thinking about leadership, productivity, and how teams can get a stronger return from the work they’re already doing.
Many teams choose to explore the book together — often through a short discussion or working session. In under three hours, teams regularly walk away with:
shared language
fresh perspective
and practical ideas for optimizing team capacity
It’s a light lift — and for many teams, it becomes the starting point for meaningful shifts in how work gets done.
Now What?
If your team feels busy, but there’s also drag, it may not need another tool or system. It may need a shared moment to step back and rethink how work is loaded; and how capacity is being used.
Optimizing capacity isn’t about doing more. It’s about getting a stronger return from the work you’re already doing — together. Let’s Connect.