What is Stress Thrash?

If you are in reporting, chances are you have experienced this term. Have you been given an "urgent" change request from an upper manager for a dashboard? Did it need to happen yesterday? Did you notice that this request has caused a ripple effect of anxiety to multiple people, not just you?

According to the Pragmatic PhD article here "Thrashing" is a term borrowed from computer science, referring to what happens when a computer’s virtual memory is over-used.

Stress Thrash is a term is used in management / project management to describe what happens when a stressed leader or team starts making rapid changes, reversing decisions and making requests that create activity NOT PROGRESS.

Why does this happen? One example is that a person is afraid of looking unprepared to a very senior leader.

Textbook signs:

• Reversing decisions

• Re-asking questions that have already been answered

• Requesting status updates that block work

• Difficulty processing metrics

What ChatGPT told me to help manage this situation:

Realize you are not responsible for the person's anxiety.

Your job is to deliver the report and explain how it works. You are not responsible for absorbing the pressure of that presentation. Don't get pulled into the stress loop.

It's not your responsibility to correct the behavior

Do you feel bad that the people on this person's team are spending super long hours? Don't be an underdog and call the leader out on bad behaviors. This can backfire given the hierarchies that are in place at the workplace.

What can you do in this situation?

You CAN redirect the work in a constructive way!

Frame the conversation as you are supporting them not criticizing them

Do say "I'm happy to jump on a call to answer technical questions about the report"

Introduce a decision checkpoint

Say something "Before I implement this, I want to confirm this is the version we want to move forward with. These changes will take some time so I want to make sure we are aligned."

Help externalize their thinking

More phrases to help in this situation are "Why don't I summarize where we are so we can make the next decision"

OR

"We have two options for this report. Option 1 is the original version. Option 2 includes the changes we discussed earlier today. Which direction would you like me to move forward with?"

You are helping to put a plan in place and help calm the situation!

Protect your capacity

Sometimes you may be the only person working on changes. If they have asked you to update two reports, you may need to say the following:

"Right now, I am finishing the updates on Report A. Once that is complete, then I can move to Report B. I can expect that to take X hours"

It may be hard to put an estimate on the number of hours it will take you.

If you don't know, verbalize it as "I will know more once I validate the inputs" Then provide an update on the hour estimate. This prevents a panicked message / emails that follow.

A good short email structure about updates:

Sentence 1 - Status/progress

Sentence 2 - What's needed or what happens next

Don't

• Be blunt and advise them to take a step back.

• Suggest maybe someone else can do the presentation for them

• Advise them that they seem stressed

As the developer YOU understand the report logic. You build the data visualizations and you fix the metrics. You helped create the data story and this matters!

Take this situation as a positive for your leadership growth! You are learning to manage upward, and help to manage ambiguity. You are structuring chaotic work.