Decision-making under pressure

When your team has too much work: decide what changes

When deadlines compete and people say they cannot take on more, start by making the decision visible. Which work needs to happen, what capacity is available, and who can change the commitments?

A useful outcome is a realistic choice about priorities, support or scope. Asking everyone to “do their best” leaves the same conflict for each person to solve alone. You can use this guide before a team meeting or an HR discussion, without a Compass account.

1. Describe the gap

List the important commitments for a defined period. Include routine work, handovers and unavoidable interruptions, alongside projects. Ask the people doing the work what the estimates miss.

Separate facts from assumptions. “Two deadlines were missed” is an observation. “The team does not care” is an interpretation. An estimate of available hours is a planning aid, not a judgement about someone’s commitment.

2. Identify the decision and its owner

Write one sentence: “By Thursday, we need to decide whether to reduce the scope, move the deadline or obtain additional support.”

Identify what you can authorise and what belongs with another decision-maker. Keep safety requirements and essential obligations explicit. If there is an immediate safety concern, use the required escalation process now.

3. Compare what can actually change

For each option, ask what it protects and what it costs. Could a lower-priority deliverable move? Could its scope be reduced? Is suitable support genuinely available?

Delegation also uses capacity. Check skills, authority and the receiving person’s workload before moving a task. If all work remains essential and capacity is insufficient, make that unresolved gap visible to the person who can authorise a change.

Example: three commitments, two people

A fictional team estimates that 18 hours remain this week for project work, after routine responsibilities. A customer launch needs 10 hours, an internal report needs eight, and a new request needs six. The 24-hour estimate exceeds the available time by six hours.

The manager checks the estimates with the team. The launch owner confirms its deadline; the report owner agrees that the report can move to next week. The manager accepts the new request, leaves two hours unallocated and records the changed report date. If the report owner had refused, the conflict would still need a decision.

The useful change is the revised commitment. The numbers alone do not resolve the problem.

4. Make follow-up specific

Confirm what will happen, what will wait, who owns each action and when you will review the plan. Record only decisions and agreements that actually occurred.

At the review, ask whether the assumptions held and whether the pressure moved elsewhere. Repeated overload may require changes to staffing, scope or working arrangements beyond a single team discussion.

Three questions to take into the meeting

• What are we asking people to deliver within the capacity actually available?
• Which commitment will change if we accept this additional work?
• Who must make the decision we cannot make here?

What if someone mentions burnout?

Take the concern seriously without trying to diagnose it. Discuss work demands and available support, and help the person find the appropriate occupational-health or healthcare route. In the Netherlands, this can include the bedrijfsarts and huisarts.

Compass supports preparation and reflection; it does not assess fitness for work or treat burnout. A person’s health concern is not resolved by completing a workload checklist. For health information, see Thuisarts on burnout (Dutch).

Use Compass for the decision you need to prepare

Compass Professional can help you organise competing priorities, question assumptions and prepare an anonymised escalation. In Scenario Training, you can practise a fictional discussion about a new request and then reflect on your response.

A starting prompt: “I lead a team with conflicting deadlines. Help me separate fixed requirements from assumptions, compare realistic options and identify what needs a decision above my authority. Ask me one question at a time.”

Use fictional details or roles rather than identifiable employee information. Check your organisation’s AI policy. You remain responsible for decisions and for following the appropriate HR and safety processes.

If the next step is an individual discussion, use the employee-conversation guide.