Make Room for What Matters.
Updated: Oct 15
Making work better should have the opportunity to make life better, too.
This week, I had a conversation that reminded me how much of our working lives can be consumed by everything required just to do our jobs. The research, the systems, the information gathering, the coordination. Each piece may be necessary, but when those pieces are spread across different places, keeping them connected can take time away from the work we care most about.
I had been researching organizations that serve an area still open in BRICK's portfolio. I wanted to find a company that helps healthcare groups attract and recruit providers while also supporting the work needed to get those people onboarded, credentialed, and ready to succeed. Having worked in recruitment myself, I know how many responsibilities sit around that process and how much coordination falls on the people managing it. I was interested in an organization that understood that experience and could bring some of those services together, making life easier for its clients.
One company caught my attention, and the more I learned, the more respect I had for what its founder was building. But it was our conversation that made the strongest impression. Her approach had grown out of her own experience doing work she loved and recognizing how much effort it took to do it well. She had felt the challenge of serving people effectively, transparently, and fairly while pulling together information and resources from different places. She understood the demands because she had carried them herself.
What stayed with me was the purpose behind it. She wanted to continue doing meaningful work while making that work better and easier for others. I am hopeful that this connection becomes a lasting partnership with BRICK. Regardless of where it leads, it brought me back to something I experienced throughout the recruitment phase of my own career.
To keep things moving, I needed data from certain sources, contact information from others, and contract requirements, compensation categories, pay codes, and benchmarks from still more places. I was constantly gathering information, entering it, checking it, and connecting it to something else. All of that was part of meeting the expectations of my internal and external customers, and getting it right mattered. But it also required a considerable amount of time and attention before I could get to the part of the work where I felt I offered the most value.
For me, that has always been meaningful conversation. I love connecting with people on a human level, understanding what they want to accomplish, and exploring how we can help each other achieve our individual and shared objectives. Those conversations take attention. They require enough room to listen, ask another question, and understand something beyond the immediate task. Every hour I spent moving information between different sources was an hour I could not spend doing that.
I suspect many people have their own version of this experience. They may enjoy their work and be very good at it, yet spend a substantial portion of the day managing the processes surrounding it. Over time, they become skilled at navigating the gaps. They know which spreadsheet to check, who to contact, where the latest information might be, and what needs to be entered again. Their ability to keep everything moving becomes so dependable that the effort involved can be easy to overlook, even for them.
Most organizations do not set out to create that environment. A tool is added to meet a need, a service is brought in to handle a responsibility, and a process develops to connect the two. Each decision can make sense on its own. As those decisions accumulate, however, someone has to manage the relationships between them. It is worth occasionally stepping back to consider how much work that creates and whether the people doing it have what they need to be effective.
That is part of what I appreciated about this week's conversation. The founder could speak to the daily experience of the people she wanted to help. There is value in talking with someone who has sat in your seat, felt the same frustrations, and given serious thought to how they could be addressed. It creates a different kind of conversation because you can spend less time explaining why something is difficult and more time exploring what might improve it.
I look for that understanding in the organizations BRICK represents. I want to believe in the people behind the product or service and understand the need that led them to build it. A crowded marketplace gives us plenty of options, but choosing something worthwhile requires more than an appealing presentation. I want to know whether it addresses a real challenge, whether the people behind it understand the details, and whether it will be useful to the person who depends on it.
Experience alone does not guarantee a good solution, and combining services does not automatically make a process better. We still have to ask what will change for the client. Will information be easier to find and maintain? Will responsibilities become clearer? Will there be fewer repeated steps and fewer interactions to coordinate? Will someone have more time to focus on the people they serve? Those are the kinds of questions that help us understand whether a solution will make a meaningful difference.
This connects closely to what we discussed in last week's issue about staying curious. We can apply that curiosity to our own working environment, including the things we have become accustomed to accepting. AI and other technologies can help us gather, organize, and use information, but their usefulness still depends on the quality of what goes into them. When information lives across different sources, we need to understand whether it is reliable, current, and consistent. A faster answer can be helpful, but we still need enough understanding to know whether we should trust it.
The same curiosity can help us notice where our time goes. How many places do we visit to complete a routine task? How often do we repeat something because two parts of a process do not connect? What do we keep chasing, correcting, or explaining? We do not have to redesign our entire working environment to begin asking those questions. We can start with one responsibility that regularly takes more effort than it seems it should.
Of course, looking for a better way requires time of its own. Research takes time. So does reaching out to peers, asking colleagues what they have tried, and having conversations with companies that might be able to help. We also have to be thoughtful about what we find. Some solutions have credible roots and a clear purpose; others may add another layer to an already complicated day. Understanding the difference takes homework.
But it won't get better until you give it the opportunity to get better. If we are always too busy to examine what keeps us busy, we can spend a long time working around the same frustrations. Taking that first step does not promise an immediate answer. It does give us a chance to discover something useful, meet someone who understands, or recognize an opportunity we had not considered. And if the thing we need does not exist, our own experience may give us a meaningful place to begin building it.
There is also a personal side to this that I do not want to lose. When we talk about efficiency, it is easy to focus entirely on how much more work we could accomplish. But not every minute we reclaim needs to become another productive minute. We live incredibly busy lives, with technology asking for our attention throughout the day and responsibilities that rarely feel completely finished. Giving ourselves back some time is a worthwhile objective.
A better process might create room for a meaningful conversation, but it might also help us finish the day with enough energy to enjoy our families, spend time outside, or simply be present without thinking about the next thing we need to do. We need that space to be the best version of ourselves. It affects how we feel, how we connect, and how well we can serve others. Making work better should have the opportunity to make life better, too.
Something to Build On
On Monday, before the week gets away from you, choose one part of your workday that consistently takes more effort than it should. It might be information you keep chasing, something you enter in multiple places, or a process that requires several conversations just to move one step forward. Take a few minutes to understand what makes it difficult and what improving it would give back to you.
Let that be your build for the week ahead. You do not need to solve everything by Friday. Start by asking a colleague how they handle the same challenge, researching an alternative, or having a conversation with someone who understands the work. Give yourself enough time to look beyond the promise and consider whether the solution would actually help. If nothing fits, write down what you wish existed. Your experience may be the beginning of something worth building.
As you do, keep in mind what you are making room for. It may be more meaningful conversations, more attention for the people you serve, or enough breathing room to finish the day and enjoy your life. Not every minute you reclaim needs another task assigned to it.
It won't get better until you give it the opportunity to get better. This week, give one thing that opportunity. A thoughtful question on Monday could be the first step toward a better way of working and a little more time for what matters.
STAY CURIOUS. LEARNING IS WINNING.
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