The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems — and What to Do About It
Rob Cross and Karen Dillon
Harvard Business Review Press (April 2023)
How to create and then sustain a workplace culture of well-being and well-becoming
According to Rob Cross, “I’ve tried to identify the flawed assumptions that are often baked into the corporate understanding of who their most valuable employees are and how these people leverage networks to produce results.
“But in doing a series of interviews with high achievers about the practices that allow them to be effective collaborators, I stumbled into something bigger…It was stress but in a form that neither they –nor [my associates and I] — had the language to articulate: the relentless accumulation of unnoticed small stresses in passing moments is what was drastically affecting the well-being of these people who otherwise appeared to have it all. We call these small pressures [begin italics] microstress [end italics}.” Cross and Karen Dillon teamed up to “make sense of this phenomenon” and their book shares what they learned from wide and deep research.
They provide an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that can help almost anyone to structure their life in ways that not only diminish microstress but also improve their overall well-being. “This connection will, in turn, add dimensionality to their life and help them mitigate the effects of microstress. It’s a virtuous circle.” Microstress has a gradual, accumulative, and often inconspicuous impact over time — like direct exposure to lead or radiation.
In this context, I am again reminded of a scene in one of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, The Sun Also Rises, when several expatriates are reminiscing about their prior lives in “the states.” One of them recalls that he owned a large company that went bankrupt. He was asked how that happened. “Gradually and then suddenly.” Microstressors are like the bad habits to which Warren Buffett once referred: “Too light to notice until they are too heavy to break.”
Cross and Dillon make brilliant use of several reader-friendly devices that include a set of “Key Insights” at the beginning of each chapter and “Coaching Breaks” (that I view as “business nuggets”) strategically inserted throughout their lively as well as eloquent narrative. For example:
o Coaching Break: For misaligned teams (Pages 26-27)
o On addressing small performance misses (32-33)
o Tracking surges in your life (46-47)
o On avoiding triggers (55-58)
o On confrontational conversations (62-64)
o On understanding what you value (104-106)
o On resilience network assessment (140-141)
o On negative health behaviors (170-171)
o On purpose killers (188-189)
o On purpose-filled connections (196-197)
Cross and Dillon also include several Figures (e.g. 2-1 “The ripple effects of one capacity-draining microstressor”) and Tables (e.g. 4-1 “What do you value?”) These devices efficiently organize and posed thought-provoking questions and/or correlate key points.
The Microstress Effect is a “must read” for all C-level executives and especially for other supervisors who also have direct reports entrusted to their care. They share primary responsibility for establishing and then nourishing (as well as protecting) a workplace culture within which there is little — if any — microstress. That said, ompanies annually ranked among those most highly regarded and best to work for are also annually ranked among those profitable and having the greatest cap value in their industry segment. Obviously their leaders are under continuous pressure to avoid or overcome the “big problems” that can result from microstress.
In this brilliant book, Rob Cross and Karen Dillon thoroughly explain HOW to do that. Bravo!