Stress is your best friend. How a therapist rediscovered his passion for helping people and what you can learn from it.
Wordcount: 2,571
Reading Time: 12 minutes
A wonderful man
I met Michael at the tail end of 2020. The first time I saw him he had a warm smile for a stranger (me), a kind word and a major concern. He knew that I am acquainted with his boss and that I am here today to “automate things”.
Often the first reaction to my presence in a business is a fear of losing your job. That is natural though, especially now with AI. That’s why I felt quite curious about the person with such a genuine greeting.
What Michael did not know yet was that my approach to “automate things” is quite different than what most people do. Charlie (his boss) knew it, because we have been talking about it for a few weeks. Charlie knew that lasting improvements come from reducing stress one employee at a time. Charlie knew that I have a very clear principle I follow.
Improve the work life of each employee and the organization automatically improves with it. Fix the micro to improve the macro as I say.
If done properly this can also have a wonderful side effect on the company culture. People are naturally adverse to change. I have found that that happens for two main reasons:
Our brain simply LOVES routines. It will continue to release dopamine even though we know what we’re doing is not optimal; even sometimes bad for us. So we biologically resist change.
We are afraid that the outcome of the change is bad for us. In case of automation, the initial reaction is to fear it will make your job harder or that it will slowly take away your job entirely.
So if you can implement the change gently (usually this means gradually, but it can also mean abruptly with a lot of empathy) and show the employees that it makes their life better you will build trust.
People need to see small outcomes that make their life better. They need to feel less stressed, or have a little more time to focus on something else that they want to do. In other words the changes need to make them feel better. The primary side effect of doing it this way is that in the future, if there is a big change coming up, they tend to look forward to it. What a great culture.
Transformation Principle #1: Introduce change gently, usually gradually with empathy, focused on employees' work life improvements.
Nobody Is Right, Nobody Is Wrong
When Michael shook my hand with his kind smile, he of course did not know about the conversations Charlie and I had. So he felt apprehensive. This gradually began to change in the next couple of hours when Michael and I sat down and began to talk. Naturally I knew what Charlie thought the problem was. We had been talking for a while at this point. But I needed to hear what Michael thought the problem was.
You see, the work routines in question will be exactly the same no matter if Charlie describes them or if Michael does. There is a process, done via an application, the process is overly cumbersome, that causes stress for Michael which causes stress for Charlie. It’s always some variation of that.
Where the story differs however is in what they both believe the root cause to be. Managers often (not always) think the employee just needs to work the process without so much fuss. That is natural, because the manager decided on the process. They subconsciously will defend it, because to them it makes sense. This is just a habit in disguise.
Employees on the other hand will blame the process. Not always, not in every situation, but generally the stress or frustration they feel is not because they think they are doing something wrong or should do something better. A work routine is just a habit. Same principle in action. Defend the status quo at all cost, rationalize your feelings (the stress etc.) and blame something else.
Transformation Principle #2: All work routines function exactly like habits in the brain. Cue, Routine, Reward.
A Quick Side Note
I always have deeper talks with the managers first, because I adjust my approach based on how the conversation unfolds. Managers know their business way better than I do. First of all I will learn the workflow process and the desired outcome, which in the end is what must be achieved. Secondly I can usually identify where the initial optimization needs to be made quite effectively.
For example, if the manager says something like: “Yeah my guys just aren’t good with technology”, that usually always means that the process itself isn’t optimal and that routines will need to change for the employee and for the manager level.
But If the manager says something like: “I don’t know if we’re using the right tech, my employees seem to have trouble with it”, then I know that the manager is not directly blaming the employees, which means they are open to the idea of it being them.
That makes a big difference, because now I will actually tell the manager right away to expect that I will recommend a change in their routine also. Subtle initial difference with a big psychological effect later in the process.
The work life of Michael
Michael opened the door to his office and let me in. Two comfortable white chairs on the left wall with a bookcase full of books a few feet beyond. His desk neatly placed in the middle with a good amount of paper and sticky notes. Michael sat down, motioned me to take a seat and so our first conversation began.
Michael became a therapist, because he wants to help people. He spent a long time studying to be a licensed therapist and counselor. When he was still living in Hawaii he focused on saving marriages with alcohol and drug problems, but when his wife got pregnant, they moved to New York to be closer to her parents. Now in Florida, Michael is directing his energy to helping people with mandatory therapy.
If you become a therapist, it is likely that what you want to focus your energy on is doing the actual group therapy session. You spent the time studying to become a therapist so that is where your personal fulfillment comes from. Michael's main problem though was that the administrative tasks (the process) became the center focus of his energy and he no longer looked forward to the sessions.
Michael runs court ordered, substance abuse, evening group therapy sessions. Each evening he had to bring a laptop into the group therapy room. He couldn’t use his normal computer. He then had to open a word document, find the correct therapy group attendance sheet and mark who was there.
Since the session is in the evening, the office staff is no longer at work. Michael then had to collect the payments from each person and mark an X next to the people who actually paid. This alone took 15 to 30 minutes of his time, depending on the night.
If you run therapy sessions that are court ordered this process will never be smooth. Many people do not want to be there, they have to. This causes them not to want to pay. So they have new excuses as to why they forgot their money most every night.
Another factor to consider is that it is in the evening. You’re already a bit tired, so are your patients. To now do tedious administrative work feels like expending extra energy that you really do not want to waste. This process set up the entire session, on a shall we say, unideal emotional foundation.
Here is a breakdown of how Michales stress cascaded down the entire organization:
Michael feels stressed
Michael doesn’t look forward to his therapy sessions
Michael calls Charlie and vents with Kim (office admin)
Naturally Michael will also make more mistakes on the sheet
Kim has to chase each person that did not pay
Kim has to track past collected payments
Kim is often frustrated and annoyed
Kim complains to Charlie, sometimes calls him
Charlie receives evening phone calls
Charlie has to track Kim’s tracking
Charlie feels stressed
This is a simplified cause and effect breakdown, but here is the main point that most people do not realize when they are thinking about workflow optimization.
Michael’s stress became Kim’s stress which became Charlie's stress. All three defend their habits in disguise, thereby unable to find a solution.
The approach is so simple, it doesn’t occur to many owners, managers, sole-entrepreneurs, side hustlers and creators. Focus on the stress, gently and gradually remove it and the ripple effects can break the Chain of Stress for an entire organization.
Yes, the solution to all of this involved technology. In the end that is what this publication is all about. But technology is the easy part. It is maybe 15% of the process. The important 85% is the focus on how the people feel in their work life in the first place. All the answers are always there.
Transformation Principle #3: Stress propagates through the entire organization. Identify the root cause of stress and eliminate it.
The Technological Changes For Michael
When Michael and I were finished talking he thanked me for listening to him so empathically and carefully. We laughed about the fact that I was basically running a “work optimization” therapy session with a therapist. But in a way that is what I do. I tune into people's feelings at work.
Michael led me out of the room, shook my hand, showed me his kind smile again, and said: “I really look forward to seeing how you will help me with all this mess”. That is when I knew that my mission with this conversation was accomplished. Michael and I were on the same team now.
There were two more conversations with Michael over the course of the next week. I spent some time watching him do his workflow, I timed everything he did so that Charlie would have a detailed return on investment and I took a lot of notes. But this is the easy part, because Michael was more than happy to show me. And yes, of course I talked to Charlie more and I also spoke to Kim.
In the end here is what we ended up fixing in the process. Really, we changed the entire thing.
I moved the word document to a google sheet. Old school word documents not only can’t be accessed by my automations, they need to be dated and emailed around. Very cumbersome, lots of room for error.
I kept the structure of the document the exact same. When I formatted the google sheet I made sure that it looked 1 to 1 like the word document. When possible I do this every time so that the new “software” feels familiar and ideally identical. Plus, since it is now on a Spreadsheet, I have automation access to every single cell.
I connected Zapier to the Sheet. Zapier is where the actual magic happens. I am but a conduit. Now I was able to track automations based on data in the sheet or add data to the sheet based on an automation, which is what I ended up doing.
Attendance record archiving via Google Drive. First I let the automation copy each sheet and save it in an archive, thereby creating an automatic record for Kim's tracking in timestamped folders. Needless to say she loved that.
Connected Square to the Sheet via Zapier. Now I created a trigger automation to run at 6am on the day before the therapy session. This found every email in the sheet and auto-sent invoices. No more payment collection verification required on Michael's part.
Adjusted the flow of the Xs. Each time someone paid, another automation triggered and marked the X in the sheet. Now Michael had to only mark the attendance. He really liked that.
Send invoice reminder to missing X’s. I then had an automation run at 11pm each night, it found the missing X’s on the paid column and sent them a reminder to pay via Square. Kim was quite happy.
There was more we ended up doing over the course of the next year. Remember that when you introduce changes gently and gradually, make the employees realize that their work life is now better, they are open for more change in the future. This usually happens. My coaching and involvement with my clients is rarely a one off.
The Transformation Of Michael
When this system ran for the first week I came to visit Michael. I found him in his office having a snack. Speeding up his chewing, he put his food down and waved me in. He stood up, shook my hand and seemed content. He looked lighter somehow, like a weight was lifted off his shoulders.
He had 9 total therapy sessions with the new system. He told me that the last two sessions were the first in a long time where he felt excited to work again. It always takes a bit of time to see the automatons in action and feel their impact. This is the part where the brain is adapting to its new routine. This can be hard and it is important to follow up with people about how they are doing.
Michael confessed that he actually felt more apprehensive in the first week. This is normal, because there is a change, he doesn’t know how the “magic” behind the scene works, so he had to get used to it. Again this is not technology, this is human nature. Patience and empathy is the key.
It was wonderful to see Michael feeling in his element again. Likewise it was great to see how much more time Kim could now spend talking to patients when they walked in the door. And of course it felt nice when Charlie called me and expressed his gratitude, because he is so much less stressed.
The Final Business Outcome: Money, Time And All That Stuff
As you know I always time the original workflows. In Zapier, I always built an execution tracker. Every time an automation fires, I add a 1 to a tracking sheet. On that sheet we have hourly pay rates for everyone. This enables us to have a clear picture of the monetary / time savings the Workflow Optimizations generate.
In the beginning of the story we identified 15 to 30 minutes for administrative tasks for Michael. That alone ended up generating 7,200 minutes (120 hours) or $9,000 in annual savings. In the end after all was said and done the adjustment we created for Michael generated over ~$35,000 in total annual savings. Needless to say, we worked on more optimizations in the future.
Depending on how managers value their own time, track the phone calls they now do not have to answer and how they value the stress reduction of their experience, these savings go much higher, quite quickly. It is difficult to measure stress reduction quantitatively of course.
But that is exactly what is so rewarding about what I do.
The most important outcomes are priceless.