TL;DR: Your team's "but right now we can't..." isn't them being difficult. They're drowning because you suck at giving clear direction. Fix your leadership, fix their overwhelm.
Look, I've screwed this up more times than I care to admit.
You know that moment when you ask someone to do something and they hit you with "but right now we can't because..." and you want to scream?
Yeah. Been there. Done that. Got the therapy bills.
I used to think my team was just making excuses. Turns out I was the problem. Ouch.
Last month, I was talking to this CTO. Smart guy. His team keeps pushing back on everything. New feature? "We're swamped with bugs." Process change? "No bandwidth." Strategic stuff? Same story.
He's losing his mind. "They hate change," he tells me.
Nah, dude. They hate YOU. Well, not you personally. Your leadership style.
Your Brain Is Like a Crappy Old Laptop
Your brain has limits. Shocking, I know.
Back in 1956, some guy named George Miller figured out we can handle about 7 things at once (Miller, 1956). But newer research? It's more like 4 things before your brain starts lagging (Cowan, 2001).
You're basically asking your team to run 47 Chrome tabs on a 2015 MacBook. It's gonna freeze up.
Studies show that when your mental workload gets crazy, burnout follows (Scanlan & Still, 2019). That "but right now" response? It's not attitude. It's survival mode.
Nobody Knows What Actually Matters
This is where most of us mess up big time.
Gallup surveyed people in 52 countries. Wanna know the #1 thing employees want from their boss? Hope. Not free snacks. Not ping pong tables. Hope (Gallup, 2024).
What's hope? Knowing where you're going and why your job matters.
When people don't know what's important, they treat everything like it's urgent. It's like being lost in a city with no GPS. Every street looks equally scary.
Demanding vs. Actually Leading
I see this everywhere. Bosses who bark orders without explaining why.
"Do this thing."
"But why?"
"Because I said so."
That's not leadership. That's being a drill sergeant. And your team isn't the military.
Research shows good leadership explains 17-35% of how well your team performs (Farhan et al., 2022). But only if you do it right.
You know what works? Connecting the dots. Don't just say "dig a hole." Say, "We're building your dream house, and this is the foundation."
How to Stop the Madness
First: Audit your communication. Do you explain WHY behind every request? Most of us don't. We assume people can read our minds. They can't.
Second: Get a simple priority system. I like the Eisenhower Matrix. Important/urgent, important/not urgent, urgent/not important, neither. Share it with your team so they get how you think.
Third: Protect their brain space. You know how group chats get crazy when too many people join? Same thing happens with teams. Four people = 6 conversations. Eight people = 28 conversations (Chernoguz, 2011). Math is brutal.
Stop the meeting madness. Batch your communications. Let people actually think.
Get this: 28% of everyone's day gets eaten by tech interruptions. That costs us $588 billion a year in the US alone (Karr-Wisniewski & Lu, 2010). Your people are drowning in digital noise.
This Isn't Just About Getting Stuff Done
Your team is burning out. For real.
When people stay in "crisis mode" too long, bad things happen. Depression, anxiety, the whole mess (Salvagioni et al., 2017). Strong correlation between being overwhelmed and wanting to quit.
Every "but right now we can't" is someone waving a white flag. Listen before they actually leave.
Start Tomorrow
Ask your team this: "What's the most important thing we need to do this week, and why?"
Then shut up and listen.
If they can't answer clearly, guess what? Neither can you.
Once people understand what actually matters and feel ready to handle it, the "but right now" excuses disappear.
Until next Sunday!
—Dr. Oliver
