> A well run company will always have more work for each employee than is possible for them to complete.
In a high-level view, sure. But if the employee is given more to do than they could possibly do, it can be very damaging to morale. At review time of things one was expected to work on, there are things you accomplished, and things you failed to accomplish.
In particular, if one responds to "I accomplished task1 and task2" with "Okay. What about task3, task4, ...?", that employee is being trained to believe they cannot succeed in this position. At that point, they are left with finding the fault either with this management style, or in themselves (...leading to imposter syndrome? I dunno, but maybe that's part of why that's so common in our sector).
There's a difference between "must do", "should do" and "can do". The list of "can do" should stretch years into the future, but the list of "must do" should always be shorter than available labor capacity.
The devil is always in the details. You need a unified approach from first-line managers up to directors setting big picture goals for it to work. There's about 20 things we'd like to do as an organization every year. But, to stay focused and execute well we need to choose the 3-5 most important things. The same applies at the individual level. If everyone's on the same page then it works great.
In a high-level view, sure. But if the employee is given more to do than they could possibly do, it can be very damaging to morale. At review time of things one was expected to work on, there are things you accomplished, and things you failed to accomplish.
In particular, if one responds to "I accomplished task1 and task2" with "Okay. What about task3, task4, ...?", that employee is being trained to believe they cannot succeed in this position. At that point, they are left with finding the fault either with this management style, or in themselves (...leading to imposter syndrome? I dunno, but maybe that's part of why that's so common in our sector).