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by Dan Tucker, Co-Founder
Image: personal photo of public mural, San Miguel de Allende, MX
Blog No. 4 - June 2023
Addressing psychic load as a way to improve your organization’s capacity for strategic engagement and alignment.
Cognitive and psychic load (together known as Mental Workload [1]) directly impact our ability to understand and activate strategy within our organizations. These mental burdens are the unseen and often unspoken source of conflict and burnout for staff at all levels of justice-committed organizations. It is profoundly dispiriting to work without full understanding of what’s being asked of us strategically and/or without the vital energy that comes from knowing we are making a useful and coherent contribution through our work. In this blog, we explore the concepts of cognitive and psychic load, their impact on strategic clarity, and how embracing technology can help all staff alleviate these burdens and contribute authentically.
Understanding Cognitive and Psychic Load
Cognitive load refers to the mental effort required to process and retain information. When our cognitive load exceeds its limits, our ability to discern what's important suffers and we experience decreased focus and creativity. This scenario may sound familiar to you: In the middle of the night, you awaken mulling over possible approaches to a work challenge that has been worrying you all week. Rather than getting up to write them down, you decide to rely on your memory, fearing that getting up will disturb your sleep. You struggle to fall back asleep as the possible solutions linger in your mind. By the time you wake in the morning, you not only feel groggy from poor sleep, but the details of your possible solutions are now spotty. This situation exemplifies the cognitive load we often bear by not capturing our ideas immediately.
Psychic load is similar to cognitive load, but it carries a more energetic and emotional weight. It's that feeling, for instance, of wanting to hold onto an idea until it's perfect or being self-conscious about sharing something for fear of being wrong. It can be exacerbated by the belief that you don’t have the power or the title to share an idea credibly. These unexpressed thoughts and perspectives weigh on us though, limiting our personal growth and hindering our effective collaboration with colleagues.
The Cognitive & Psychic Load of Strategy
In justice-committed organizations, strategies are complex and inter-disciplinary. They are deeply personal to most staff, as well, since they pertain to issues affecting their own lives and to their core value sets. For many groups, strategies are also dynamic given the churn in the political, cultural, and economic contexts we work in. There is, in other words, an inherent cognitive load for staff in both feeling and understanding justice strategies, as well as in applying them to their own work.
Moreover, there is a high potential for psychic load related to strategy, including questions such as:
- Do I agree with the emergent strategies the organization is pursuing?
- Is the work I am comfortable doing still viewed as strategically relevant?
- Am I being asked to change my core approaches to my work?
- How do I build relationships across differences to nurture strategic alignment with staff I don’t resonate with?
These are the kinds of questions—mental burdens–that many staff don’t feel comfortable voicing. Reducing this load in a systematic and supportive way is essential to building strategic engagement and alignment across an entire staff.
Embracing Technology
Especially in today’s hybrid work environments, technology has a key role to play in unburdening our cognitive and psychic loads. For some that may seem counter-intuitive. Isn’t technology yet another thing to learn? But with the advent of cloud-based collaboration tools–Google Workspace, Airtable, and Miro are three examples among many–we can all capture and share our ideas and questions with a very modest amount of training. These tools provide us platforms for discussion, brainstorming, and shared decision-making, fostering an environment where we can activate strategy together from wherever we may be located.
The benefits of reducing cognitive and psychic load through technology extend beyond strategic thinking and activation. They also enhance our overall well-being and happiness. Studies have shown that excessive cognitive load contributes to stress, burnout, and decreased job satisfaction [2]. By employing technology to streamline our workflows and lighten our mental burdens, we create space for down-time, self-care, and rejuvenation. When done thoughtfully, embracing these tools can promote a healthy work-life balance and foster a deeper sense of fulfillment in our work.
My Personal Experience & The Benefits of Reducing Mental Workload
Throughout my 20-year career as a technical product leader, I was often guilty of hoarding ideas until they were perfect. However, I learned the hard way that this approach no longer yields results in today's collaborative work environments. Hoarding ideas created dangerously high mental workloads for me, negatively impacting my creativity and productivity. It even caused me to experience burnout in several of my jobs.
But when I and my team members started sharing early-stage ideas, everything changed. By embracing technology and reducing our cognitive and psychic loads, we experienced a range of benefits:
Less Attachment to Ideas: By sharing ideas early, there was less attachment to them. This allowed us to remain open to feedback and iterate on our concepts more effectively.
Embracing Critical Questions: Early idea sharing fostered an environment where we could ask critical clarifying questions without getting defensive responses. This encouraged open dialogue and improved the quality of our ideas.
Embracing Imperfection: The fear of judgment associated with sharing imperfect ideas diminished as we embraced early sharing. We felt less judged and more comfortable in expressing our thoughts, leading to a more inclusive and supportive work culture.
Improved Energy Levels: By reducing our mental workloads, we experienced improved energy levels. The burden of carrying countless ideas in our minds was lifted, allowing us to focus more on creativity and innovation.
Contagious Idea Sharing: As our team experienced the benefits of early idea sharing, the practice spread contagiously across other teams. This created a culture of collaboration and idea exchange throughout the organization.
Exceeding Expectations: By leveraging technology to reduce cognitive and psychic load, our products began to exceed expectations. The collective wisdom and diverse perspectives we harnessed led to innovative solutions and remarkable outcomes.
Rediscovering Passion: Personally, I rediscovered my love for work and had a deeper appreciation for the contributions of my coworkers. By sharing ideas and collaborating more effectively, I felt a renewed sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Executives and staff alike struggle with the cognitive and psychic loads of consistent strategic engagement. The weight of carrying numerous, complex ideas in our hearts and minds is significant, especially in today’s remote work settings with fewer informal opportunities to process with colleagues. Using technology to systematically capture, discuss, and advance our ideas about strategy creates a supportive environment for collaboration and alignment.
Sources:
[1]: Human Mental Workload: A Survey and a Novel Inclusive Definition
[2]: How an understanding of mental workload can boost performance
