If you’re a leader trying to lead a team right now, you don’t need a study to tell you that work feels harder than ever. You are likely experiencing what I call the “Business Sandwich Crisis.” It feels like you’re being squeezed by demands from every angle. If it’s not profit demands from the C-suite, it’s technological shifts like AI, expanding legal liabilities, and employee burnout and disengagement.
When I sat down with Ethan Chazin on his “Chazin the Dream” podcast, we talked about my upcoming book, Unsustainable: Why Our Workplaces Aren’t Working and What to Do About It. We looked at how traditional workforce management is cracking under four-way compactors and why the old playbook of “enduring more stress” no longer works.
Here are the three core takeaways from our conversation on how to navigate unsustainable workplace conditions.
Shift from Litigation to Partnership
At the end of 2023, I made a deliberate operational decision to stop taking new litigation cases. After 20 years in court battles and three decades in law, HR, and dispute resolution, I was (and still am) well aware that litigation is a blunt, retrospective tool that doesn’t repair broken systems. It might be one of the ones needing repair!
To build sustainable workplaces, we must shift from command-and-control structures to Employment as a Partnership. It isn’t a transaction but a dynamic relationship requiring operational clarity, psychological safety, and mutual accountability.
When friction arises, stop looking for who to blame and start asking what problem needs to be solved.
HAQ Your Disputes Before They Reach a Courtroom
Unaddressed conflict is a quiet drain on enterprise health, costing organizations thousands of dollars per employee every year in lost productivity, disengagement, and turnover. When legal confusion creates panic, leaders usually default to two extreme responses: a) ignoring the friction until it erupts, or b) outsourcing the resolution to slow, expensive litigation.
Applying the HAQ Standard can help you address friction before it becomes a crisis:
Humane: Practice Third Ear Listening, or listen for the hurts you can heal. Look past defensive bargaining positions or sharp language to identify the unstated human fear or unmet need driving the conflict.
Affordable: Measure the true cost of avoiding difficult conversations. Co-creating a private, solutions-focused agreement is exponentially cheaper than legal defense or managing an unhealthy team dynamic.
Quick: Execute small, actionable steps. Convene quick huddles, establish SMILE goals (Specific, Measurable, Individualized, Likable, Easy), and stay on PARR (Plan, Act, Revise, and Repeat) to evolve with changes in workplace conditions. They will change.
Legal victories address claims, not relationships. They can give you a judgment or verdict, but they won’t repair broken systems on their own.
Keep “Humans in the Loop” When Incorporating AI at Work
Artificial intelligence is accelerating work and the stresses that come with today’s workplaces. It can automate routine administrative tasks and speed up workflows, but that means it can also spread errors with velocity. Unable to feel empathy, interpret cultural nuances, or hold judgment, it is also less capable than skilled humans in resolving conflicts and restoring trust in relationships. We need to keep Humans-in-the-Loop (HITL), forming a human-robot partnership in which we use technology to sift through mountains of data, but we continue to rely on human judgment where dignity, fairness, and trust are on the line. This requires leaders to develop the skill of humility.
Are workplace conditions feeling unsustainable?
Your Monday Morning Action Step
We don’t fix unsustainable workplace systems by enduring them or waiting for perfect legal clarity. Instead, we fix them by redesigning what people are asked to carry alone.
This week, pick one recurring point of friction on your team. Instead of trying to figure out who to blame or sending a policy reminder email to a lot of employees the issue doesn’t involve, open a 15-minute, solutions-focused conversation with the people closest to it. Ask:
Where is our current process getting in the way of your work, and what do we both need to make this sustainable?