Real Flow: Break the Burnout Cycle and Unlock High Performance in the New World of Work

by Brandi Olson

Your organization is capable of higher performance than you imagined possible when you shift to Real Flow.

Business leaders have seen it before. Teams that should be achieving great work with ease are caught in a wild frenzy of competing priorities. Gradually their people suffer burnout, innovation evaporates, and time and energy are wasted on the wrong problems.

Thanks to this organizational multitasking, their organization is flooding from the pressure to do it all. But there is an unexpected solution to achieve high performance once again.
Organizational agility expert Brandi Olson brings front and center what happens when an organization chases too many priorities simultaneously. Featuring 140 interviews with organizational leaders, Real Flow demonstrates the principles of flow that will create the environment teams need to achieve and sustain high performance. Integrating cognitive science, organizational agility, and lean principles, this is your guide to deliver exceptional value and enable people to be happy, healthy, and engaged in their work.
Discover:
● The costly link between competing priorities, multitasking, and burnout and why no amount of vacation, self-care, or team-building activities will solve it.
● How to embrace the ecosystem paradigm and the direct impact it has on an organization’s ability to adapt, change, and thrive.
● Strategies to remedy the burnout problem that don’t involve doing less, expecting less, or shrinking the to-do list.
● How to redefine performance to maximize human potential for the long term over the short term and what that will do for your teams.
● The essential practice of limiting work in progress to improve the flow of value, plus the radical effect it has on solving the challenges your organization is facing.

Leaders don’t need to choose between good work and their teams’ well-being. Leading a high-performance organization depends on happy, healthy people. Read Real Flow and cultivate an evidence-driven approach to design a high-performing, agile organization, improve employee retention, and stop the burnout for good.

Genres: Nonfiction

242 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 29, 2022

About the author

Brandi Olson is an organizational agility expert and founder of Real Work Done, a consultancy serving leaders through agile transformation, organizational strategy, team design, and executive coaching. She has spent nearly two decades consulting with organizations across diverse sectors—from nonprofits to universities to global Fortune 500 companies. As an expert in organizational learning and change, she teaches leaders how to solve problems and adapt fast with high-performing teams.

Brandi works at the intersection of organizational learning, high-performing teams, and human-centered design. She believes the best way to deliver exceptional value is through teams that are deeply engaged, high performing, and happy. Her approach was built through her diverse experience as a teacher, a designer, an entrepreneur, and CEO of a thriving consultancy. She is a trusted adviser to executives and companies ranging from global financial services companies, world-class health care institutions, tech start-ups, innovative small businesses, and nonprofits.

A sought-after speaker, Brandi practically addresses topics like agility, emotional intelligence and productivity, organizational multitasking, and human-centered design. Her clients have included Mayo Clinics, University of Minnesota, 3M, Be The Match, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, The Brand Lab, The Conflict Resolution Center, and more. Brandi’s expertise has been featured in Forbes, Women in Agile, Tandem Coaching, and Agile Alliance.

Brandi studied organizational learning and change at Northwestern University, holds a master of education from the University of Minnesota and a BA in psychology and wilderness education.
She has had extensive training in human-centered design and lean-agile transformations. Brandi lives in Minnesota with her husband, Sam, and their two children, Micah and Nora.

Learn more online: www.realworkdone.com.

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I work with leaders who fundamentally believe this and live by a now, next, later roadmap + ruthlessly prioritize, therefore their ecosystem operates with flow. It’s truly a joy to be in their presence and work in their house.

But, on the contrary, I work with leaders who completely focus on output… and, unfortunately, their ecosystems live in a constant state of flood. It is draining and soul sucking to play in their space.

I was drawn to this book because I follow Brandi on LinkedIn and I find her content very valuable. And this book was much the same.

I believe this book belongs on everyone’s book shelf. If you share similar beliefs and are on the journey to creating flow… this book will motivate, inspire, and prepare you to keep going.

And for those that have yet to begin the journey, let this book be your foundation. Outcomes > output. Better > best. People > technology.

Great work, Brandi!
I can’t wait to share with my peers.

[Jenn "JR" · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers three important topics critical for the health of an organization and, ultimately, its success. The integral, systems approach is a mainstay of digital transformation - but that topic can be difficult to tackle. Brandi Olson approaches the topic in accessible language, with excellent illustrations -- both graphics and metaphorical.

Much of what she describes is not new: Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, among others, wrote about these kinds of issues over 100 years ago.

Olson issues a challenge: "you (and everyone else) will need to stop settling for the appearance of productivity and performance rather than the real thing."

The author describes the challenges faced in organizations and low-key leads up to a discussion of the roots of corporate culture in a white supremacist, colonialist mindset which not only results in overworked, burned out employees but which also perpetuates the same dysfunctional system, reinforcing the lack of diversity of cultures, people and ideas.

"Burnout is energy-consuming and self-perpetuating. It fosters a monoculture: if everyone is operating on a burned-out and overworked level, no one has the brain capacity to think that perhaps things could and should be different."

Most organizations respond to symptoms -- burned out employees are compelled to use up their vacation time before the year-end, company potlucks or online "coffee/happy hour" chats (or worse: Yammer) substitute for connection and culture. More is seen as "better" and forcing employees to jump between many different projects always leads to no clear successes or improvements.

What organizations fail to realize is that “peak performance means making the greatest possible impact over the longest period of time.” That means addressing root causes -- finding the smallest changes you can make that will have the biggest impact (Pareto principal), implementing changes incrementally and iteratively to have time to reflect on the impact throughout the ecosystem (ie "butterfly effect"), and avoiding toxic perfectionism ("better > best").

"Flow is the experience of energy, creativity, and value moving from ideas to results throughout your entire organization." This is achieved by making your work visible throughout the organization -- put it on KanBan boards, for example (or open up access in Confluence to all enterprise users).

In John Doerr's "Measure What Matters," he similarly advocates for cross-functional sharing of goals so that individuals, teams, departments and divisions can work together to ensure they all help each other meet their goals (and thus all the company/enterprise level goals).

When an organization is "flooding" -- they are taking a shotgun approach which may inevitably result in some losses: limiting growth opportunities, trapping people in a "wash, rinse, repeat" or dooming teams to failure like Lucy's chocolate factory speed-up.

Olson offers a lot of practical tips to get people thinking differently about how to identify the challenges and keep track of the work: switch from small screens & spreadsheets to big whiteboards or walls, establish "work in progress" (WIP) limits. Olson's analogy on how a WIP functions:

"Have you ever been to one of those gigantic waterslides where you first spend 25 minutes climbing up six stories, only to whoosh down the slide in approximately 93 seconds? Have you ever noticed that, in order to keep everyone safe, they have a one person on the slide limit?"

Work that has been started but not finished is a big liability - it represents unrealized value (and may end up as waste). This is why prioritization is critical -- but rather than prioritize, many organizations would prefer to continue piling up the work and ignore the costs in turnover as people burn out from constantly being spread too thin or having to switch projects too frequently.

"Productivity without outcomes is not real productivity." Building a bridge is an output while people safely crossing that bridge is an outcome. Migrating a website to a new content management system is an output while enabling marketing team members to update their own pages quickly is an outcome. "Outputs answer the question, How will we do it? Outcomes answer the question, Why does this matter?" -- or "When can we open the champagne?"

Olson also talks about the importance of focus and the damage of "multi-tasking" -- an organization that is flooding is multitasking across the enterprise, busy without achieving meaningful outcomes.

Let's jump ahead to characteristics of white supremacy work culture outlined in “White Supremacy Culture” --

1. Perfectionism - focusing on what doesn't work, punishing people for mistakes, not leaving room for learning and continuous improvement.

2. Sense of Urgency - everything is a "high priority" where I work, probably where you work, too. "There is little time for thoughtful decision-making, short-term fixes come with long-term costs."

3. Quantity over Quality - conflict avoidant environments with a focus on productivity and output over EQ and the underlying mechanics that enable the establishment of teams with high levels of trust where creativity can flourish.

4. Document-Driven Communication - leaves little time for conversations and exploration.

A key takeaway:

"By making work visible, limiting work in progress, and being clear on prioritization, you can create time, focus, and energy for teams to have difficult conversations, get to know each other personally, build trust, and identify significant opportunities for learning how to do and be better."

As the author states: the future of work is PEOPLE - who need to be in environments designed to for cross-functional collaborative teams where they can develop trust and work toward shared outcomes:
- The team must have all the cross-functional skills & expertise to do the work from start to finish
- The team must work together long term
- The work must be transparent so the team can be in flow

There is no such thing as "best practices" -- start by identifying what you do now, create a map of your ecosystem. Make improvements - better not best., and don't obsess with a "big bang" of fixing "all the things."

"If everything changes at once, you’ll overwhelm the system and slow down learning."

"...empower people to do their best work, solve problems, and be better leaders—no matter where they are in the organization."

"better is always better than best."

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I posted a longer review on my LinkedIn review series, so send me a message if you're interested in that but, in summary, I read this on Kindle and highlighted 28 times, which to me indicates how often I can see returning to this material. There is a lot I didn’t share because this would have turned into less of a book review and more of a cliff notes to the book. I absolutely suggest you check it out for yourself if you feel that your organization would benefit from a pause to think if the way we’ve been getting work done is because it’s familiar or because it’s the most effective. If it’s the way it’s always been done, then there’s your flag - you have an opportunity here to significantly boost your team’s health and begin to implement flow.

[Sonya Perez-Lauterbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burnout is real. Organizational overload is real. This book provides some real simple and effective recommendations to actually move towards high performance AND job satisfaction. If you want to go beyond employee appreciation and mental health days and actually get at the root of overwhelm from a systemic level I highly recommend this book.

It is easy to read and has some great figures/images that support understanding. It calls into questions some deep assumptions many leaders have about how organizations work and how to get things done. It highlights the real cost of not being willing to prioritize and not being brave enough to look at the reality of the capacity of your people. But the most compelling part of the book is that it doesn't say, lower your expectations or don't try to go after all the important projects it provides tools and practices to work with the make up of the human brain AND get more done by re-thinking how you work and prioritize. Leaders at all sizes of organizations can learn from this book. I will even be implementing the recommendations in my own life to move items from the WIP (work in progress) list to DONE list.

[Jenn "JR" · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers three important topics critical for the health of an organization and, ultimately, its success. The integral, systems approach is a mainstay of digital transformation - but that topic can be difficult to tackle. Brandi Olson approaches the topic in accessible language, with excellent illustrations -- both graphics and metaphorical.

Much of what she describes is not new: Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, among others, wrote about these kinds of issues over 100 years ago.

Olson issues a challenge: "you (and everyone else) will need to stop settling for the appearance of productivity and performance rather than the real thing."

The author describes the challenges faced in organizations and low-key leads up to a discussion of the roots of corporate culture in a white supremacist, colonialist mindset which not only results in overworked, burned out employees but which also perpetuates the same dysfunctional system, reinforcing the lack of diversity of cultures, people and ideas.

"BURNOUT IS ENERGY-CONSUMING and self-perpetuating. It fosters a monoculture: if everyone is operating on a burned-out and overworked level, no one has the brain capacity to think that perhaps things could and should be different."

Most organizations respond to symptoms -- burned out employees are compelled to use up their vacation time before the year-end, company potlucks or online "coffee/happy hour" chats (or worse: Yammer) substitute for connection and culture. More is seen as "better" and forcing employees to jump between many different projects always leads to no clear successes or improvements.

What organizations fail to realize is that “peak performance means making the greatest possible impact over the longest period of time.” That means addressing root causes -- finding the smallest changes you can make that will have the biggest impact (Pareto principal), implementing changes incrementally and iteratively to have time to reflect on the impact throughout the ecosystem (ie "butterfly effect"), and avoiding toxic perfectionism ("better > best").

"Flow is the experience of energy, creativity, and value moving from ideas to results throughout your entire organization." This is achieved by making your work visible throughout the organization -- put it on KanBan boards, for example (or open up access in Confluence to all enterprise users). In John Doerr's "Measure What Matters," he similarly advocates for cross-functional sharing of goals so that individuals, teams, departments and divisions can work together to ensure they all help each other meet their goals (and thus all the company/enterprise level goals). When an organization is "flooding" -- they are taking a shotgun approach which may inevitably result in some losses: limiting growth opportunities, trapping people in a "wash, rinse, repeat" or dooming teams to failure like Lucy's chocolate factory speed-up.

Olson offers a lot of practical tips to get people thinking differently about how to identify the challenges and keep track of the work: switch from small screens & spreadsheets to big whiteboards or walls, establish "work in progress" (WIP) limits. Olson's analogy on how a WIP functions:

"Have you ever been to one of those gigantic waterslides where you first spend 25 minutes climbing up six stories, only to whoosh down the slide in approximately 93 seconds? Have you ever noticed that, in order to keep everyone safe, they have a one person on the slide limit?"

Work that has been started but not finished is a big liability - it represents unrealized value (and may end up as waste). This is why prioritization is critical -- but rather than prioritize, many organizations would prefer to continue piling up the work and ignore the costs in turnover as people burn out from constantly being spread too thin or having to switch projects too frequently.

"Productivity without outcomes is not real productivity." Building a bridge is an output while people safely crossing that bridge is an outcome. Migrating a website to a new content management system is an output while enabling marketing team members to update their own pages quickly is an outcome. "Outputs answer the question, How will we do it? Outcomes answer the question, Why does this matter?" -- or "When can we open the champagne?"

Olson also talks about the importance of focus and the damage of "multi-tasking" -- an organization that is flooding is multitasking across the enterprise, busy without achieving meaningful outcomes.

Let's jump ahead to characteristics of white supremacy work culture outlined in “White Supremacy Culture” --
1. Perfectionism - focusing on what doesn't work, punishing people for mistakes, not leaving room for learning and continuous improvement.

2. Sense of Urgency - everything is a "high priority" where I work, probably where you work, too. "There is little time for thoughtful decision-making, short-term fixes come with long-term costs."

3. Quantity over Quality - conflict avoidant environments with a focus on productivity and output over EQ and the underlying mechanics that enable the establishment of teams with high levels of trust where creativity can flourish.

4. Document-Driven Communication - leaves little time for conversations and exploration.

A key takeaway:

"By making work visible, limiting work in progress, and being clear on prioritization, you can create time, focus, and energy for teams to have difficult conversations, get to know each other personally, build trust, and identify significant opportunities for learning how to do and be better."

As the author states: the future of work is PEOPLE - who need to be in environments designed to for cross-functional collaborative teams where they can develop trust and work toward shared outcomes:
- The team must have all the cross-functional skills & expertise to do the work from start to finish
- The team must work together long term
- The work must be transparent so the team can be in flow

There is no such thing as "best practices" -- start by identifying what you do now, create a map of your ecosystem. Make improvements - better not best., and don't obsess with a "big bang" of fixing "all the things."

"If everything changes at once, you’ll overwhelm the system and slow down learning."
"...empower people to do their best work, solve problems, and be better leaders—no matter where they are in the organization."

"better is always better than best."

[Oluf Nissen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made the practices of creating flow in an organization easy to understand in ways that Don Reinertsen did not achieve with The Principles of Product Development Flow (and I love Reinertsen's book).

The author uses simple language, illustrations from everyday life, and jargon-free ideas from neuroscience to encourage you to help your organization get out from under the traps that keep bringing burnout and dissatisfaction with results.

You will learn from stories about boating down a river, fantasy creatures such as unicorns, and evocative images such as the Champagne Test. Along the way, you'll encounter sidebars with real-life stories from other practitioners, and you'll learn (and more importantly remember) the three main ideas behind solving one of the most prevalent issues in modern business - organizational multitasking.

I was able to read my copy over three or four sittings of a few hours each over a weekend, and that time included taking notes and pulling out interesting quotes and passages.

The book sets expectations clearly as well, stating two common obstacles and what to do about them.

What you will take away from the book is a powerful idea that can help you address problems in responding effectively to change, lack of innovation, and issues with organizational culture, such as diversity, equity and inclusion.

This book is one of my new favorites.

[Chrissy Fleming · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that you just want to slip onto people’s desks in hopes the message will land on those most resistant to hear it. Brandi Olsen takes very simple principles and clearly spells out how the hardest work of leadership is working against our own biases and cultural norms of “how work should be done.”

My now-dog-eared copy has plenty of quotes I’ll be bringing into my own practice of leadership coaching. The principles are simple—stop multitasking, limit work in progress, work together not in silos—and yet they can be so hard to implement. Olsen makes clear an compelling arguments why it’s worth the work to follow them.

The only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 was because it could have used a bit more editing to trim out repetition, typographical issues, etc. That said, a main principle of the book is that “better” is greater than “best,” and I am glad this book is out in the world, doing good and creating value, instead of waiting to be perfect.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

REAL FLOW is a great, in-depth look at how to be more productive and happier at work and how to maximize the potential of your organization and team in healthy, sustainable ways. The author starts by explaining the problem and why it exists and then moves into clear descriptions of how to make the needed changes. I loved all the metaphors and analogies that really created a visual picture of the concepts the author was trying to explain. I've already recommended this book to one friend struggling with too many priorities and the trap of multi-tasking and I'm sure I'll continue to recommend it to more! Totally worth the read.

[Linda Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Flow agility principles and strategies are the #1 reason my business is flourishing!! . These principles also work in my personal day-to-day!! I bought multiple copies for colleagues and friends. Priority read for sure! After ordering the book, I found the author’s (Brandi Olson) website (realworkdone.com). Reading her articles is a like having my own personal business coach. She also does presentations and more.

[Kelly Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot of truth that resonates. The points are explained clearly and with enough repetition to help it sink in. The processes advocated by this author are exciting but I’m afraid go against the current tide of “do more, do it faster, do it cheaper.”