Overworked and Underutilized: Why Your Org Manages to Pull Off Both

Burnout and boredom are skyrocketing together. Learn how autonomy, cross-pollination, and smarter goal-setting can unlock hidden potential.

Author

Zubin Teherani
August 02, 2025

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Two Opposite Pains, One Broken System

Burned out or bored stiff?

¿Por qué no los dos?

According to LinkedIn's latest Workforce Confidence survey, more than half of U.S. professionals say their skills collect dust in their current role.

Yet those same offices buzz with Slack pings at 10 p.m.

One group sprints until their eyeballs beg for a vacation day. The other refreshes email hoping something…anything…requires brainpower.

Welcome to the modern paradox: burnout and boredom living under one fluorescent roof.

So where’s the disconnect?

The Capacity Illusion

We’ve created work environments that are optimized for visibility, not value.

We create busy work by getting stuck in these loops:

  • Context chaos by splitting your day across 12 tabs, 3 departments, and 7 tools.

  • Reactive fire drills keep part of your team trapped in a sprint cycle.

  • Copy-paste busywork leaves the other part of your team perfecting their LinkedIn scroll technique.

  • Goal fog means no one can explain why any of it matters.

The result? Frustration and resignation.

Gallup’s latest report found global employee engagement is at a lukewarm 23%.

Translation: three out of four folks are present in body, not in spirit.

You don’t need better hiring. You need better design.

Which brings us to...

The 3-Part Talent-Unlock Playbook

1. Autonomy With Guardrails

Micromanagement kills creativity. “Figure it out” creates chaos in a Patagonia vest.

Hand out small, well-scoped projects that matter to revenue or mission. No committee. No bloated decks. Just one owner with real decision rights, a visible metric, and a tight deadline.

Step

What to do

Why it works

Define

Frame the outcome, not the task.

People own results, not checklists.

Scope

Keep it 2–4 weeks max.

Fast cycles → quick wins → momentum.

Net

Empower your team to proactively come to you for help

Quick syncs > weekly check-in

Example: Instead of “we need to improve onboarding,” try: “Run one onboarding cohort this month. Your KPI: 80% complete their first task within 24 hours.”

At LeagueSide, this was the primary job of managers. They spent their time setting priorities, scoping projects, managing deadlines, and unblocking the team.

An underrated aspect of this was coaching. It was important for the manager to ask questions and not give commands. This taught the team on how to think through prioritizing work, identifying the right metrics, and scoping solutions.

2. Cross-Pollinate to Kill Boredom

Underutilized doesn’t mean unmotivated. It often means people were hired for one thing and locked into it forever.

Let them wander, strategically:

  • Have product marketers sit in on customer success calls

  • Invite engineers to a growth meeting

  • Let junior folks shadow senior planning sessions

Why it works:

  • They see the big picture.

  • They build org-wide glue.

  • They get re-energized by new puzzles.

3. Make Goals Visible, Layered, and Shared

Use the WILR™ approach for setting goals. Remember, lead indicators build momentum. Lag indicators track results.

Layer

Cadence

Purpose

Example

Daily lead

End of day

Momentum

“Write 30 min”

Weekly lead

Friday retro

Validate daily grind

“Draft one article”

Monthly lag

Month-end

North-star outcome

“Publish 4 posts, 2k subs”

Let your team own their own goals and let them track progress where they work: Sheets, CRM, project management system, Strava (?), etc.

Quick-Start Checklist

  1. Pick one goal and assign clear ownership to someone who doesn’t currently own an outcome.

  2. Schedule cross-team shadows next sprint or organize a cross-functional team around an important goal.

  3. Start measuring employee NPS to understand how your team is feeling and whether this is working

  4. Kill one recurring meeting. Audit standing meetings that don’t drive action.

Final Thought

When you create clarity, reduce friction, and hand people real ownership, they don’t just contribute. They thrive.

Overwork and underutilization aren’t opposite problems. They’re symptoms of the same issue:

Smart people… with no space to think.

Your job isn’t to control every task. It’s to create a system where everyone has room to do the best work of their career.

That’s culture.

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