How managers boost team results by planning not hustling

Jimmy: Those who grasped the concept from the start and took this time out ended up outperforming all of their peers. Some of them were the highest performers in the business, because they actually applied their energy and effort to where it was important. This preparation-to-perform time was giving them the edge.
Welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader, the podcast for leaders working in complex, challenging environments, to gain insights and ideas which help you increase your impact without burning out and to help you build a high-performance culture in your team. I'm your host, Jimmy Burroughes. And if you're new to The High Performance Leader, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes before you put down your device.
Hello, and welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. I am always excited to get to do these solo episodes where we go a little bit deeper on some of the topics or conversations that are coming up time and time again when it comes to leadership high performance. And so this week, we're going to be talking about a concept that came up in chapter five of our book research, but also is a topic of conversation that we seem to keep seeing when it comes to really, really busy managers who are just struggling to work out what they should be doing, and are therefore caught on the hamster wheel of success, sprinting faster and faster and faster, but not seeming to get the results, or the rewards, or the recognition that they're looking for. And if that sounds like you, then this is a great episode for you to pay attention to. And it's where we're going to share some tips and ideas on why that's happening and what you can do about it, more importantly.
So let's dive into the concept of preparation to perform. And if I use the analogy of the hustle culture that we all seem to work in, it's kind of like the work-harder, work-longer, work-more mindset is our go-to circumstance right now. So leaders are fixated on the idea that if they want to be successful, they have to outperform everybody by doing more. And that can be a really unhealthy place for you to end up. If you're in that working weekends, working evenings, taking all the things on from your team in a hope that you can stand out and you can shine, chances are you're actually having the opposite effect to what you're intending. Because what we know from the research is that it isn't about doing more, it's about adding more value to what you do and only putting your energy and time into the most important things that are going to move the dial or move the needle more than all of the trivia and smaller items that perhaps you should not be doing yourself or you should be delegating.
So let's think about how do we challenge this hustle culture and do something a little bit different than competing with ourselves to perform harder and harder and harder when we're probably feeling that right now, we're feeling a little bit burned-out, a little bit tired, maybe even feeling like we're not sure we can carry on, and work out what that might mean.
So I want to use an example of where preparation to perform has demonstrated really incredible results in the world of sport, and then I'm going to move to one that is an example from a programme that we worked on with some uh a corporate organisation a couple of years ago that has seen some incredible results.
So the first example is the Harvard basketball team. Now for those of you who follow college basketball, which is a pretty serious industry in itself, it's extremely competitive and the quality of sporting prowess is extremely high. And within the Harvard basketball team, they decided to run a bit of an experiment. They first of all said to half of the team, "You're going to continue to train as per normal, which is five, six, sometimes six days a week including match days. And you're, you know, you're training hard, you're competing hard, and you're going at it as hard as you can for as long as you can through the season. And let's track the number of injuries, let's track the number of points scored, let's track how you're feeling about being on the team, your general health, your engagement, and we'll compare at the end of the season."
The other half of the team, they said, "Well, we're going to try something a little bit different. What we're going to do is we're going to spend the five days a week training, not six, including match days. And you're going to have one day where you're going to meet with the physio, rehab, you're going to work on your diet and your nutrition. You're also going to spend time just relaxing. So half a day is not to be done training, but actually enjoying a hobby or something you enjoy doing more of, maybe spending time with family, maybe cooking, maybe whatever it is you like to do, and we'll compare your results at the end of the season."
Now the interesting result was the performance on the court. Uh at the end of the season, group B, the ones who'd been encouraged to relax a little bit, actually outperformed their uh group A counterparts by 21% in terms of the number of points that they scored in the season. What was even more interesting was that their incidence of injury was significantly lower. Uh their general well-being and feelings about being on the team were significantly higher, uh statistically higher increase in fact.
So the important lesson to take out of this was, by taking a little bit of downtime, you actually can perform better. Equally, as an athlete, you aren't expected to perform every single day. As a leader, you aren't expected to perform at match-ready or full fitness every single day. There's going to be days when you do need to perform and be on your top of your game, and there's going to be days when you need to take a bit of time out to train and think and visit your leadership physio, maybe your coach or your mentor, uh spend some time thinking about your nutrition. Are you actually looking after your body and wellness and mind? Or are you just churning like that hamster on a wheel sprinting faster and faster? So there is a lot of importance here placed on strategic preparation to perform, taking that time out.
Now what does that look like in practical terms? Because I know that if you're listening to this, you're trying to find a way to the top, or you're trying to find some way of accessing high performance. But perhaps you are filling your days with tasks, and meetings, and things that you have to do.
So I want to tell you the other story, which is we were working with a large American retail business and we were working on their executive transition programme, where these are leaders who have significant responsibility, thousands of emails a day coming in, thousands of employees working for them, and we suggested that what they did once a week, was they took a notebook and a pen, they left their phone and their laptops behind, and they went to somewhere away from their workspace, whether that was go sit under a tree outside, or go to a café, go sit in a restaurant, go to a yoga studio, wherever you go, just be away from the hustle and bustle with your notebook and pen.
And we want you to focus on two things. Number one: What's the most important thing for me to deliver this week? And number two: What's the most important thing for me to deliver next week? So we're thinking about focus this week and planning for next week. And the rest of the time, if you think of those really quickly, then the rest of the time just sit and meditate, notice, just think, just daydream. Let's see what happens.
Now you can imagine these are extremely busy executives. They're people who are waking up at 4:00, 5:00 a.m. in the morning. Their days are packed. They maybe get to bed extremely late. They don't have a lot of time on their hands. And some of them laughed at us when we suggested they take this time out to sit with a notebook and pen. "We don't have time for doing this. We don't have time to be away from our desks and our phones for 20 minutes." And we encouraged them to try. Others were pensive and said, "Well, I'll try." And some of them really committed.
Over the course of the 12 months that we worked with that business, we started to track the level of burnout, the number of people who didn't stay in the executive transition programme, and also the level of performance of those who did. And you probably won't be surprised by the storytelling, resulting in the fact that those who laughed in our face and said that we can't do this 20 minutes were probably the ones that needed it the most. But unfortunately, many of those didn't make it through the programme because they were either unable to meet the standard required, or they burned-out, or they were stressed out and they had to leave.
The ones who were pensive and tried it and dabbled, came back and said, "Do you know what? We're converts. This is the way forward. And I didn't realise how much I needed this time to really focus and work on what's the most important thing for this week and next week."
Those who grasped the concept from the start and took this time out, ended up outperforming all of their peers. Some of them were the highest performers in the business, because they actually applied their energy and effort to where it was important. This preparation-to-perform time was giving them the edge. It was giving them the head space to not be in the doing, but to start thinking about working on the on the most important tasks and actions that were going to give the most impact and value based on their effort.
Any leader can play whack-a-mole, any leader can be juggling tasks and spinning plates. But what really makes the difference between the high-performance leader and the average leader, is the high-performance leader knows where to put their effort and actually achieves more by doing less. There will always be more tasks than you can complete in your daily lists. There will always be more emails than you can clear in one day. And of the when you get to the end of the the inbox and you're clearing trivia, then perhaps your energy will be better spent working on something that was more significant and more impactful to maybe make some of that trivia go away down the track.
So we've got two examples there, and there are countless others that you can encounter if you do a little bit of research on preparation to perform. But essentially the moral of the story here is you don't need to be at Olympic athlete performance level in the Olympics, every single day. Actually, some of the days should be training, some of the days should be thinking, some of the days should be recovery days. And so it's moving away from that mindset of, "Well, if I'm not working as hard as I possibly can, I'm being lazy, or I'm going to get found out, or perhaps somebody's going to think that I'm not pulling my weight, my team won't respect me." And actually, that time spent during preparation is what's going to give you the edge. It's going to help you think more strategically. It'll help you develop your skills and grow as a leader. It'll give you some mental rest time.
Now we've talked about these two executive and daydreaming TV channels that are in your mind in previous episodes, but essentially your brain needs to rest to join the dots of what's important. So taking that time out, also maybe taking that time out to exercise, to go for a walk, to do your hobbies, all contributes to your enhanced performance.
So I recommend doing these things. Equally, if you can work out how to put in some conscious breaks during the course of your day, that will enhance your performance. Over the course of your day your brain gets tired. We know this happens. We've got some science that proves that actually your brain the prefrontal cortex, that sits at the front of your brain, fills with the by-products of using all that energy on thinking. Uh there's essentially burned sugar starts to clog up your brain. And when you take a bit of a break, you help those by-products get cleared out. If you take a break by going for a walk, you clear those by-products even quicker. If you go for a six-minute walk, you also enhance your creativity and innovative skills. So you can see some advantage here of taking some time out.
And the best example is, "I don't have time to do this. I have to get from this meeting to this meeting to this meeting." Well, let's start thinking about how can I take 15 minutes between meetings? If you can't take 15, can you take six? Could you push that meeting back by 10 minutes and take a little walk just to refresh your mind, not a walk on your emails, not a walk on social media, or catching up on the phone, just a walk to clear your head. That will enhance your performance.
What we see over the course of the day is our productivity starts to drop. But those people who take those little microbreaks, those six to 10-minute breaks during the course of the day, their performance doesn't drop at such a rapid rate. So by the end of the day, you're still being productive. You're not hazy and tired and struggling to think. You're still at a higher percentage of your total or peak productivity than you were before.
So really two lessons here. It's time to engage preparation to perform as your key to high performance. And it's time to stop thinking about taking time out as lazy time, and start seeing its value as preparation-to-perform time, so you can access that high performance.
Now if you enjoyed this episode of The High Performance Leader, please do leave us a comment or a review on whichever platform you're listening on. Also, share this episode with somebody you know is struggling with the ability to take a break, or doing too much, they're on the hamster wheel. Who do you know that would benefit from listening to 13 minutes of a podcast that might change their lives and the way they think about how they act? Just do that now for me, and share that.
And finally, please make sure, if you haven't already, that you go to jimmyburroughes.com and grab a copy of our latest book, Escape the Multitasking Trap. It's a fascinating and short read through one CEO's story that we worked with, Michael, how he went from the multitasker extraordinaire to the expert in monotasking, and the positive impact that that had on him and his team across his business, just by changing some small things in the way he did. We share his story, but we also share how you can do that and achieve those gains, those benefits, and those performance improvements for yourself. It's free to download, even better. And what's more, those people who download the book will get access to a very special exclusive training, where we're going to be sharing some other insights on how you can become a high-performance, high-impact leader, which is coming up in just a few weeks' time. Equally, you'll get access to find out a little bit more about a really sensational experience we're putting together as a team for you, people just like you, who are desperate to access the recognition, reward, and results that you deserve for all your hard work every day in your business.
So that's it for this week. Hope you enjoyed this episode, as I say. Please make sure you reach out, let us know what topics you'd like us to cover. We're getting some great feedback and input from listeners, and we try and accommodate every single one of those. Also, if you'd like to be a guest on The High Performance Leader on future episodes in series three or series four, we're currently recording series three, we'd love to have extra guests. If you've got something really special you'd like to share about your expertise, what's made you a high-performance leader, please reach out and we'd love to talk. Take care, speak soon.
That's it for this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review on whichever platform you listened on. We really appreciate it, and it helps us to connect with new listeners. Also, if you haven't already, head to jimmyburroughes.com and download a copy of my latest bestseller, Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture, and it's packed with practical action tips to get you started. Stay tuned for next week's episode for game-changing insights and ideas on The High Performance Leader.