You Cannot Fix the Machine While You Are Running It
The "Doer-Boss" paradox is killing your strategy. Here is how to buy the time to fix it.
“You Can’t Sharpen a Knife While You’re Cutting” was my work that got the most reaction last month. The analytics told me the headline drove clicks. The messages I received tell me something different. Readers were desperate for someone to say it was okay to stop.
They echoed the same refrain. I know my knife is dull. I know I am working twice as hard to get half the result. But if I stop cutting, we miss the quota, the deadline, or the payroll.
I know that feeling. I spent years of my life living it as an editor at a daily in northern New Jersey. Every Thanksgiving or Christmas, we played the same game. We banked as much content as possible so we could cover staff time off. We did not have systems that could handle real life. So we leaned on our most seasoned reporters. We pushed them past the point of exhaustion. We asked them to do more than was physically possible because we were terrified of holes in the paper.
This is the Doer-Boss paradox. You are stuck in the operational weeds because the system depends on manual labor. You need to step back to fix the machine, but you cannot because you are acting as the machine.
Today I want to change the conversation. I have written in the past about why you must pause. I am not going to re-hash that. I want to focus on how you steal back the time to do it.
The Idea: Strategic Debt
Software teams talk about something called technical debt. It is the cost you pay for the fast fix instead of the right fix. The code works for a while. Then it gets messy. Then you spend all your time patching holes instead of building anything new.
Newsrooms have the same problem. I call it Strategic Debt.
Strategic Debt is the interest you pay on decisions you have not made. It comes due when you throw bodies at a problem instead of building the tool that would have solved it.
I saw this at Philly.com. If you know Philadelphia, you know the Eagles and the Phillies live somewhere between sports and religion. Our game day chats drew massive crowds. We did not have the right moderation tools. We needed humans to approve comments and let people in.
So we paid the debt with our strongest talent. We took our smart digital producers, our best writers, and the people hired to build the future. We sat them in front of screens and made them into human turnstiles. They clicked a box again and again so fans could enter a chat room.
You cannot pay down Strategic Debt with extra hours. You cannot grind your way through it. The only way to reduce it is to turn down output for a moment and fix the asset under your feet.
You have to take a Strategic Pause.
Three Ways to Buy One
1. Declare Bankruptcy on Zombie Tasks
Zombie tasks are the work that never dies. Every organization has them. They shuffle around. They eat time. They offer nothing in return.
I spent months once building a set of organizational dashboards. The Board wanted more pictures. The CEO wanted more automation. Internal teams had strong opinions. Outside developers had new ideas. We kept circling the same drain.
The final product was beautiful. It also had no purpose. It never became part of our daily practice. It just sat there.
We should have ended the project months earlier. We could have put that time toward a real problem. So take a look at your week. Identify the task that delivers the least value. End it. Do not replace it. Use the recovered time only for strategy.
2. The Good Enough Standard
Perfect is a luxury of well-staffed newsrooms. Most of us are not living in that world. Perfect often gets in the way of sustainable.
If you are drowning in Strategic Debt, you need to name the places where B-plus work is fine. Pick one product or process where you are polishing more than is needed. Tell the team what you are doing. Say it plainly. This week the internal newsletter does not need to shine. It just needs to go out.
This is uncomfortable for high performers. It feels like a lowered bar. It is not. It is shifting energy from a low-value ritual to a high-value repair.
3. The Infrastructure Sprint
If you cannot find an hour a day, you may need to burn a day to save a year.
Software teams sometimes take a sprint to tighten the backend. Newsrooms need the same thing. Call it a Strategy Friday. Call it a quiet week in August. Call it whatever you want. The goal is simple. Create a protected space to fix the knife.
No new pitches. No new partner calls. No new shiny things. Just the slow steady work of repairing the workflow that makes the rest of the year feel impossible.
I am seeing this for the first time in my role at the American Press Institute. We limit internal meetings on Fridays. I had never worked in a culture that did this. I was not sure if it would help. I am finding it invaluable. It gives me space for deep work. It quiets the cutting. It sharpens the strategy.
The Momentum Trap
The fear I hear most often is that a pause will kill the momentum. The truth is harder. The momentum is already fading. You can feel it in every decision that takes too long. You can see it in the turnover. You can see it in the fact that your most-read story is about exhaustion.
You are the leader. You set the pace. You make the space. If you do not call the pause, no one else will.
I am curious where you see Strategic Debt showing up in your own work. Hit reply and share one example. I promise you, you are not the only one carrying it.
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