The Work You’re Avoiding is Trying to Tell You Something

 There are tasks on your list right now that keep getting pushed to tomorrow.

Not because they're unimportant. Not because you don't know how to do them. You know exactly what they are. You've known for weeks.

Here's what I've learned: that's not a discipline problem. That's a signal.

When I catch myself consistently avoiding something, my first assumption isn't *I need to be more organized*. It's *something is off here*. And the real work is figuring out what kind of problem it actually is.

The Misdiagnosis

Most operators default to the same answer: I need to be more disciplined. I need better time management. I need a new system.

That's usually wrong.

You're treating symptoms. You're not looking at the structure underneath.

If the same *type* of work keeps getting avoided — across weeks, across quarters — that's not a personal failure. That's a business design issue. And no amount of productivity hacks fixes a structural problem.

Three Diagnoses Worth Considering

It's Too Big

Sometimes avoided work is just poorly defined work.

It feels heavier than it should. There's no clear starting point. You open the document, stare at it, and close it again. That's not laziness — that's your brain refusing to engage with something that doesn't have an obvious first move.

You haven't broken it into executable steps. "Fix our onboarding process" isn't a task. "Improve documentation" isn't a task. "Standardize the security stack" isn't a task. Those are outcomes wearing the costume of tasks.

The fix is brutal scope reduction. Keep cutting until "done" is obvious. Until the next action is undeniable. If you can't describe what finished looks like, you're not ready to start.

It's the Wrong Owner

This one's harder to admit.

You know how to do it. You could do it. But it keeps sliding because it requires sustained attention you don't have, or it's simply not the highest-leverage use of your time.

Here's what's actually happening: you shouldn't be doing it at all.

This isn't about delegating tasks — it's about assigning ownership. There's a difference. Tasks get handed off. Ownership means someone else is accountable for the outcome, the follow-through, and the judgment calls in between.

MSP owners who are still handling escalations, still building QBRs, still managing vendor relationships day-to-day — that work isn't getting done *well*, and it's not getting done *consistently*. Because it's not yours to own anymore.

The tension here is real. Letting go is harder than just doing the thing. Doing it yourself feels faster. It feels like control. But you're filling a role that's blocking someone else from growing into it, and blocking yourself from the work only you can do.

It Shouldn't Exist

Some avoided work isn't execution-problem. Isn't ownership-problem. It's strategy-problem.

It's the recurring thing nobody wants to do. The work that exists because of a one-off client exception, a legacy decision nobody has revisited, a custom pricing arrangement that made sense in 2018. It's the process that's technically documented but nobody follows, because it was designed for a version of your business that no longer exists.

Your business has accumulated complexity. That complexity generates work. And nobody's stepping back to ask whether the work should exist at all.

One-off client configurations. Supporting twelve tools when four would do. Custom service exceptions that eat margin and create support overhead. These don't need better execution. They need to be removed.

What the Pattern Reveals

Step back from any individual item. Look at where the avoidance clusters.

That's where your business is unclear. That's where the structure is weak. That's where complexity crept in while you were busy executing.

This isn't a productivity conversation. It's an alignment conversation. The avoided work is showing you the gap between what your business is designed to do and what you're actually trying to do.

Where This Shows Up

In MSPs, the patterns are predictable:

Pricing conversations that keep getting deferred. Clients who should be exited but aren't, because that conversation is uncomfortable. Tools that should be consolidated but persist, because nobody wants to manage the migration. Processes that exist on paper but aren't followed in practice.

The math here is straightforward: the longer something is avoided, the more expensive it becomes. Deferred pricing conversations compress margin. Clients that should be exited drain support capacity. Unconsolidated tools create training overhead and security exposure. The avoidance isn't free — it's just a cost you're paying slowly instead of all at once.

Reframe the Behavior

Next time you catch yourself avoiding something, don't ask *how do I get this done?*

Ask *why does this feel off?*

Is it too big? Break it down until the first step is obvious.

Is it the wrong owner? Stop doing it and figure out who should.

Does it need to exist at all? Eliminate it.

Avoidance isn't the problem. It's the signal you've been ignoring.

The Most Important Piece of Employee Management - Lessons Learned

 The Most Important Piece of Employee Management

 - Lessons Learned, episode 63

 

Bad management causes disgruntled employees. That’s easy to say. How does it play out? In my opinion, it’s in the feedback and two-way communication. This article is about effective feedback that actually helps and does not alienate employees.

By the time I started my first MSP, I had been managing teams of 25-30 people for several years. In all of those cases there were either no employee reviews or annual employee reviews. In my opinion those are identical choices: Both are useless and not helpful for the employee or the team in any way.

Why is an annual employee review the same as none at all?

That’s easy. Consider your new year’s resolution to cut down on carbs, lose weight, learn Spanish, or document all your procedures. Then imagine that no one ever mentions anything about this to you until December 31^st. How are you doing on that resolution?

Or consider a new skill. I want to improve my basic coding so I can begin using agent AI more effectively. Option A is to set aside blocks of time every week to read, take classes, practice with real world tasks, etc. Option B is to spend one whole day once in the next twelve months. Which is more effective? Option A of course.

The weaknesses of annual reviews are too numerous to mention. The most important flaw is that they become “big” important events despite the fact that they cannot possibly have a positive impact on performance, employee morale, or company success. Employees are nervous about them, treating them like high school report cards.

Managers hate to do them and generally put them off. And, for the most part, they do a poor job precisely because they don’t know what to say. Every manager knows how good every one of their direct reports is doing. They see it every day. And they do give feedback all year long. But how do you summarize everything someone does for an entire year?

Never-Ending Evaluations in Your Business

Luckily, the concept of continuous improvement is practically built into the business model of IT companies. We try to practice lean and agile methods. Quick responses to changing needs. Kaizen – continuous incremental improvement.

In my company, we started with Quarterly evaluations, but tied these to weekly activities and what I call the daily “chatter.” Daily chatter is just the flow of conversation that happens every day in the office.

“How’s that studying coming? Is it as easy as you thought?”

“Did you put your notes in the ticket?”

“Thanks for checking up on yesterday’s appointments.”

Notice that all of these are just normal conversation. These comments and questions should not come across as accusatory or judgmental. If you need to correct someone, you can. But the all-day chatter in the office is just light conversation. It conveys a sense that this is simply what we expect.

Evaluation Starts with Hiring

In my book, evaluation starts before you begin the hiring process. You should have good, clear, detailed job descriptions. These should list the skills and temperament you are looking for. “Skills” means both technical and soft skills.

Once you have a good job description, create a spreadsheet with each item you want in the ideal candidate, one item per row. From there you can write your job ad, which should also be detailed and list as many of these traits as you can.

And it flows . . . You use those criteria to determine who to interview. And you use them as guides to the interview. And you use them for evaluating all the candidates and choosing someone to bring on board.

After you hire someone, these criteria will give you a good sense of where they need additional training or real-world experience. Specific training programs are defined as needed. And for areas where competence seems high, you just need to give them tasks that demonstrate the skills you believe they have.

Finally, we get to the classic process of evaluation. That begins with setting quarterly goals. These are personalized, for the most part. You can include company-wide goals like keeping clients happy. But the most important bits are focused on helping the employee come up to speed as needed, learn new skills, and improve in areas specific to them.

This list should be reasonable. Maybe five or six items maximum. Minimum should be two or three. Don’t feel obligated to put something down just to put something down. Goals are automatically time-bound as this is a quarterly exercise. And, of course, all goals should be measurable. Write down all of this in a simple form, one-page maximum.

Finally, you flow through the spreadsheet to the actual evaluation. How did the employee do on each goal? How do they rate themselves, and how do you rate them? If you’ve been giving daily, constant feedback, there should be no surprises here at all. People who are late every day know they’re late every day. People who always put their notes in the system before leaving the client’s office know they do that. And so does the manager.

Rinse and repeat.

One final note on giving continuous feedback: Don’t worry that employees will see this as nagging. If everyone goes through this process with a sincere desire to improve the employee and the organization, then the daily chatter is just a steady reminder of how we need to go about our day. Really. Employee won’t see this as nagging if you deliver it right.

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Book Notes

I still believe The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson is the best place to start on employee feedback. Get the latest version, which includes an update on the classic “feedback sandwich” approach. Other good books in order of preference:

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier.

The Feedback Imperative: How to Give Everyday Feedback to Speed Up Your Team's Success by Anna Carroll.

The Feedback Book: 50 Ways to Motivate and Improve the Performance of Your People by Dawn Sillett.

 

Feedback always welcome.

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This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

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Karl W. Palachuk is an executive coach and author of several books, including Managed Services in a Month and Relax Focus Succeed. He has built, bought, and sold several businesses, including two successful managed service businesses in Sacramento, CA. He advocates a holistic view of business, viewing the company as a system. You can find him at karlpalachuk.com or on LinkedIn. No artificial intelligence apps were used in the writing of this post.

:-)

Is Your Past Experience, or History?

I am always intrigued by the different ways people deal with the events in their lives. Some people seem able to simply ignore the past and not let it affect them today. Most people spend too much time thinking about the past.

Everyone knows you can’t go back and change the past, so it’s best to learn from it and move on. For many people, that’s “easier said than done.”

Your personal past and business past are related, but quite different. And, yes, they each affect the other. Here’s the question I’m interested in: Do you consciously learn from your past? In other words, do you see your past as simply history, or do you examine it as experiences to learn from?

I think most people would say that the “right” answer is to treat your past as a series of opportunities to learn. But that’s not what most of us do most of the time. I think you have to choose to when learn lessons so that they become "past experiences."

Some lessons we learn automatically. These are things like, “Don’t touch the hot stove (again).” We’re not talking about these kinds of lessons.

In business, two people can learn very different lessons from the same experience. Here are a few examples:

A client doesn’t pay on time

Our technicians consistently cannot get their timecards in by 5PM Friday

Another tech finishes a job but fails to document how the problem was fixed

In each of these cases, one consultant might say, “Well, some clients just don’t pay on time.” That person sees the non-payments as historical facts, and that’s all. They have not learned any lesson beyond some clients don’t pay on time.

Another consultant will look at that situation and say, “How can we address this? Let’s find out why clients pay late. Is it difficult to pay on the first of the month? Are they going through a bad time and need a different level of service for some time? Something else?” In other words, this consultant digs into the why so they can address the situation.

If the explanation turns out to be that this client just pays everybody late, then the experience can lead to a process that makes late payments expensive or impossible. Remember: All problems in your business can be solved with processes. If it's something else, then a human-to-human conversation has to take place.

Ultimately, you only improve your business when you choose to learn from experiences. If you simply accept that your experience represents the world as it is, then there's no point in pretending you can change anything. Clients won't change just because it inconveniences you. For proof, consider every vendor you do business with. How often do you sit down and consider how convenient it is for them to do business with you?

Two absolutely unbreakable rules come into play here. First, nothing happens by itself. (Sound familiar?) These problems won't fix themselves.

Second, you can't control people, but you can control your processes. And if I'm right that you can fix all business problems with processes, than you learn from you experiences and start building practices and procedures that will make you business better in the long run.