by Jenna McCaffery | Director of Engagement & Innovation
Table of Contents
If you’ve been keeping up with this series, we’ve already explored two key elements of the FLOWS™ Framework. Here’s what we’ve covered so far:
- F – Focus on Clear Goals: how clarity reduces confusion
- L – Leverage Challenges and Skills: why the right level of challenge unlocks motivation
Now we turn to the ‘O’ in FLOWS™: Optimize Your Work Environment. For leaders and teams, this means shaping physical, digital, and cultural spaces that reduce friction and support focus, because the environments we create can either fuel great work or quietly chip away at it.
Why Environment Matters for Leaders
According to Harvard Business Review, employees are more engaged when they feel they have control over their time and workspace. For neurodivergent employees especially, even small friction points like visual clutter, endless notifications, and messy shared drives can take a bigger toll than you might think.
Your role as a leader is to offer the right tools, remove unnecessary barriers, and create an environment where employees can focus and do their best work. When the setup is supportive, people have more energy for the work that really matters. When it isn’t, small friction points can pile up (literally) and that’s where ‘doom piles’ come in.
Doom Piles Aren’t Just Personal
If you’ve heard of “doom piles” (short for Didn’t Organize, Only Moved), you know they’re the classic ADHD move: stacking clutter into one pile to “handle later.”
But here’s the thing: doom piles show up in organizations too. Think:
- A shared drive stuffed with random files no one can find.
- A project board that hasn’t been updated in weeks.
- An inbox where everything feels urgent, so nothing actually gets done.
Both personal and team-level doom piles drain energy and slow progress. Leaders can help by giving employees systems that make organizing easier than piling, both digitally and physically.
How Leaders Can Help Teams Optimize Their Environment – The “O” in FLOWS™
1. Make the Invisible Visible
- Provide a visual project management tool so deadlines and responsibilities are clear and not left floating in people’s heads.
- Encourage the use of whiteboards or magnetic calendars in personal workspaces for priorities. Increased visibility everyone stay organized and confident about what comes next.
2. Reduce Digital Noise at Scale
- Normalize focus blocks for the whole team.
- Encourage the use of status setting tools so people know when colleagues need uninterrupted time.
3. Create Team-Friendly “Focus Corners”
Not everyone needs a Pinterest-worthy office, but every employee deserves a consistent, distraction-light workspace. Leaders can:
- Provide stipends for small workspace upgrades.
- Offer focus-support tools like fidgets or sensory-friendly desk items like these fun for employees who benefit from them.
4. Replace Doom Piles with Clear “Homes”
- For teams: Standardizing how files are named and stored.
- For individuals: Encourage team members to add a 10-minute block to their calendars each day to tidy their space and list their top three priorities for tomorrow.
5. Encourage Rituals and Routines
Rituals reduce decision fatigue. Leaders can encourage:
- Weekly resets for shared drives or project boards.
- Team rituals, like Monday priorities or Friday reflections.
Optimize, Then Adjust
Optimization isn’t a one-time effort. Leaders can check in with employees by asking simple questions like:
- What part of your setup helps you focus?
- What gets in your way?
- What one small change would make work easier tomorrow?
The most useful insights often come straight from the people doing the work.
Final Thought
As a business owner or people leader, optimizing environments means removing friction so employees can spend their energy on meaningful work, not on fighting distractions.
FIT HR offers fractional HR support to help leaders identify friction points, put the right systems in place, and build work environments where employees can stay focused and engaged. Contact us today.
For more ideas on focus-friendly tools, visit Snapdoodle Toys to explore their full selection.