A Beautiful Cage

Speaking with a business leader last week, they described their diary: meetings from early to late, no breaks, constant calls. They took pride in finishing the to-do list, in ticking everything off. The feeling was clear: full equals important, full equals needed.

I asked, “What is the most important work?”

Some high-performers often love the busy and the movement.  Packed schedules and full calendars feel like progress. The pressure, the rush, even the double-booked meeting rooms can make an organisation feel like it’s moving fast and super productive. But busyness can be a beautiful cage, keeping us occupied but not necessarily moving forward.

Some of this has legacy roots. Workflow, habits and projects that made sense years ago are still in motion. Old ways of doing things, legacy practices, habits of behaviour keep rolling and sometimes not questioned…until we look with fresh eyes. These can be blind spots, absorbing energy and attention while giving little back.

I’ve seen leaders in this space slowly become trapped by the very systems and routines that fuelled them, and for some, got them to where they are!  Winning can leave a trail of obligations, habits, and noise. I call it winner’s bloat. Over time, it clutters the system and distracts from what matters most.

And winning once can be a very different approach to winning repeatedly.  You will know this in your world: repeat performance requires a clearer, tighter, reflective lens on the work we do, the energy we have, the alignment we create and the patterns that matter.

Teams, organisations and leaders who perform repeatedly protect ‘white space’. Like the ‘gaps on the page’.  They are double-spaced, while others are single-spaced.  They remove unnecessary steps. They deliberately keep their calendars lighter so they have time for the conversations, thinking, and work that moves the whole system forward.

Sustained performance is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, but a fast one, won by a steady, sustainable rhythm.

I learned this early in my career. I was working flat-out, always leaning forward at my desk, constantly “on.” One afternoon, I needed to change my rhythm to allow reflection. I pushed back from my desk, leaned back with my hands behind my head and enjoyed the start of a ‘reflective pause’. My boss walked past, saw me, and said, “Uh-oh… have you quit?” We both laughed, but it said a lot about the culture. If you weren’t visibly busy, it looked like you weren’t working. How much behaviour around you is to fit in, to match others, to follow the rhythm (whether it is a song you want to dance to or not).

Performance leadership means challenging that mindset and acting as a steward of the environment. It’s not about everyone adopting your pace or rhythm, it’s about creating the conditions for you and each person around you to find the rhythm that lets them perform at their best.

Three Practical Ways to Start

1. Audit your calendar – Highlight the meetings and tasks that no longer serve a clear purpose, ineffective obligations, and redesign it.

2. Ask your team about their rhythm – In your next 1:1, ask, “What pace lets you do your best work?” and listen without jumping to solutions.  They may have never been asked about their rhythm.

3. Create visible white space – Block thinking time in your diary and make it clear it’s valued, not wasted. Encourage others to do the same.  Not ‘time off’ but ‘time in’....into reflection, into depth, into wisdom.

   
   

If you or your organisation are ready to break out of the “beautiful cage”, I love helping people reveal and unlock these system shifts that are often much closer than you think.  

Shift your single space to double space and leave the cage behind!