Overcommitment Is Everyone’s Problem
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”
At DoorDash, we did quarterly planning. Every cycle, when reviewing our team’s draft goals my engineering partner Andy Fang always led with one piece of predictable yet critical feedback: "you have more goals than people."
Our teams were ambitious, well-intentioned — and inclined to be over-committed. They wanted to take on more, whether through their own motivations or perceived pressure from executives and stakeholders. We pushed them to iterate until they had a small number of high-impact areas.
Our job as leaders is to set our teams up for success. If we dilute their focus, or let them do that to themselves, this is self-defeating.
The Price of “More”
Over-commitment degrades the entire system:
PMs skip discovery and ship the first solution that comes to mind
Designers submit UX without user testing
Engineers optimize for velocity over understanding what they are building
Managers stop coaching and start approving, disempowering their teams in the process
Collaboration and constructive debate stops at every stage
Work becomes a game of hot potato. Everyone's goal is getting things off their plate as fast as possible. This is how teams rediscover waterfall development by accident.
The sad irony is that overcommitted teams often can’t even make the changes that would save them, such as onboarding new team members, defining a leaner launch, or improving how they work together.
Usually everyone knows it's happening but feels powerless to stop it. As one PM recently told me: "it's a secret everyone knows."
The damage compounds over time. When teams don’t have time for discovery, they become more dependent on management to set their direction. Empowerment can’t flourish in a system that never slows down.
Leaders Need to Lead
Whether this originated from top-down pressures or bottoms-up ambition, leaders need to assess their team’s plans and right-size them. Win or lose, leaders share the outcomes. It’s better that they instill discipline than suffer the consequences. They can do this by encouraging their teams to:
Limit goals and double down. One to three goals per team per quarter gives them a real shot at material impact. More than that, and results start looking better on paper than in practice.
Plan outcomes, not deliverables. Outcome-focused plans create room to meet goals in the best way possible accounting for experimentation, failures, and iterations.
Plan to 80% capacity. Teams need breathing room to evaluate what they shipped. Without this, there is no room to iterate based on new insights. In lean manufacturing, buffer capacity looks inefficient from the outside but leads to higher throughput.
Don't add without subtracting. When something new arrives off-cycle, defer it or move something else.
When leaders push their team to make realistic plans, they are enabling them to get more done.
Teams Have More Power Than They Think
Overcommitment isn't only a top-down problem. As Ben Horowitz and David Weiden put it: "Executives can verify that a plan is good, but cannot dictate a good plan. And the corollary: [teams] that follow executive instruction blindly get fired." Teams need to advocate for themselves through their own planning, and pushback if necessary.
Here are ways they can own their part of this process:
Pick important goals. If a goal doesn't warrant your team's full attention, it shouldn't be on the list. Organize around fewer, more meaningful goals.
Own the scope. It’s easier for managers to evaluate goals than plans. Do at least high level discovery and scoping to inform your plans. If you are asked to do something unrealistic, say so before making commitments. Be prepared to defend your inputs.
Surface tradeoffs explicitly. Don't try to squeeze two important things into the space of one. Highlight the choice and your recommended approach. Have the difficult discussion at time of planning rather than when reality sets in later.
Talk to your manager. Be open about what feels aggressive, what alternatives exist, and what you want to align on. Take ownership for working through this together. Get to the best plan you can sign up for.
Go all in. When you are successful in narrowing your focus, reward the trust by working towards your plans with urgency. The best way to keep your focus is to deliver strong impact.
I used to work with an executive who deliberately set aggressive (and sometimes arbitrary) goals to challenge his teams. Teams that assumed they had to say yes made commitments they couldn't keep. They failed predictably, often with catastrophic results. I learned to push back, have our team develop a realistic counter-proposal and defend our assumptions. When we did this, he became our biggest champion and supporter.
Leaders set the context, but teams that self-advocate set themselves up to deliver. In the end, your results and your reputation for delivering on commitments are both on the line.
Don’t Mistake Activity For Achievement
Whether you’re leading a team or part of one, avoid the trap of taking on too much. Packed roadmaps feel productive. Focused ones are productive.
The next time your team is overcommitted, don’t just execute. Stop and focus.
Working Through This Together
I've navigated this tension as a team leader, executive and advisor. If this resonates and you'd like to think through how it applies to your team, I'd love to connect. Book time.
