When Kelsey dropped by her friend Dane’s boutique marketing firm that Thursday morning, she had one goal in mind: cappuccino.
Instead, she walked straight into chaos.
The Scene
Two designers were huddled in the corner, voices low but urgent, scrolling through what looked like three different versions of the same ad campaign.
A project manager sat at her desk, shoulders tense, eyes darting between her overflowing inbox and a spreadsheet full of red cells.
The team lead paced back and forth, muttering about “slipping deadlines” and “client calls we’re not ready for.”
It was the unmistakable sound of a team working harder and somehow getting further behind.
“What happened here dude?” Kelsey asked.
Dane sighed. “Kel, in your words, we’re in a workaround spiral. Everyone’s doing extra steps to cover for a client’s change of plan and unclear roles, and nobody’s actually talking about it.”
Then, he bid Kelsey an apologetic farewell, telling her he’d need a raincheck on their coffee date.
Backstory: How Dane Learned to Spot the Spiral
Dane hadn’t always been this calm about team breakdowns. Early in his career, he’d worked for a digital agency that prided itself on “creative chaos.” The chaos part was true. The creativity? Not so much.
There, no one knew who owned what. Designers were redoing copy. Account managers were rebuilding decks at midnight. The clients were happy at first, because everyone worked like heroes. But burnout hit like a freight train. By the end of year two, half the team had quit.
That’s when Dane discovered, courtesy of his good friend Kelsey, the 3 Buckets™. :
- Roles & Responsibilities — Who does what, and who owns it?
- Goals & Planning — Where are we headed, and how are we pacing ourselves?
- Workarounds — What extra steps are we taking to get around a broken system?
He’d promised himself he’d never let a team he led spiral into the workaround trap again.
The Intervention
“Alright,” Dane said, clapping his hands once, “conference room, five minutes.”
The team gathered, still buzzing with low-grade frustration. Dane grabbed a marker and drew three big circles on the whiteboard.
“Here’s how this works. We’re going to put every frustration into one of these buckets. No blame. Just buckets.”
They started slow:
- “I’m redoing slides because I didn’t know they’d been updated.” → Roles & Responsibilities
- “Deadlines keep shifting without warning or rational input.” → Goals & Planning
- “I’m copy-pasting data from three systems every week because no one is using the system like we agreed.” → Workarounds
As the list grew, shoulders began to drop. People were realizing these weren’t personal failings. They were structural problems, symptoms of a broken system.
The Shift
Forty-five minutes later, the whiteboard looked like a crime scene map… but a hopeful one.
Dane and his team had assigned clear owners for every deliverable. They’d reset deadlines to reflect actual capacity instead of wishful thinking. And they’d agreed to spend a Friday afternoon learning how to automate the weekly data merge so no one had to be the “spreadsheet martyr” anymore.
For the first time in weeks, the tension broke. Someone cracked a joke. Someone else brought in the leftover muffins from the kitchen. Work still needed to be done, but now the team had a plan and a path forward that everyone understood.
Why This Works
The power of the 3 Buckets™ isn’t just in naming the buckets. It’s in what happens when you do:
- You separate the problem from the person.
Instead of “You keep missing updates,” it becomes “We haven’t clarified who owns this step.” - You move from emotion to action.
Identifying the bucket turns vague frustration into a solvable tasks. - You expose the hidden cost of workarounds.
Every unnecessary step is draining energy, trust, and time – resources teams can’t afford to waste.
How to Use This With Your Team
If you suspect your team is quietly drowning in workarounds, here’s a Bucket Reset agenda you can run in under an hour:
Step 1: Draw three circles on a board or shared doc. Label them Roles & Responsibilities, Goals & Planning, and Workarounds.
Step 2: Invite the team to list frustrations anonymously for the first five minutes.
Step 3: Place each frustration in the right bucket. Keep the conversation blame-free. Sometimes the challenge doesn’t have a plan or owner solution and sits in the workaround circle. Make anything in that circle your priority.
Step 4: For each bucket, choose one top-priority fix. Assign an owner and a deadline.
Step 5: Schedule a two week to 30-day check-in to make sure the fixes stick.
The Takeaway
Workarounds often masquerade as “being a team player” or “just getting it done.” But left unchecked, they erode efficiency, morale, and trust.
The morning Kelsey walked into Dane’s office could have ended with everyone retreating to their corners to keep grinding. Instead, it became a turning point, because Dane created an environment for courageous conversations that gave the team a way out.
You can do the same. The next time you feel like your team is running hard but getting nowhere, grab a marker and draw three circles or buckets. The path out might be only 45 minutes away.