My CEO, Joe Terry, told me a golden rule about triathlons that I wish more executives would adopt: Don’t change everything at once.
If you’re trying to improve your race time, you could change your nutrition, your training schedule, your equipment, and your pacing strategy. But if you change all four and suddenly shave ten minutes off your time, how will you know which adjustment actually worked?
You have no idea.
The triathlon philosophy is to make small adjustments, one at a time, and pay attention to what happens. That way, you can identify what moved the needle.
This is a great tip for leaders.
A company misses its quarterly targets too many quarters in a row, and suddenly everything is on the table. Leadership restructures the organization, introduces a new performance management system, and changes the incentive structure. Everyone is busy. Everyone is adjusting. Everyone is exhausted.
And six months later, the executive team is sitting around a conference table trying to figure out whether any of it worked. And what needs to change next.
This is what happens when we mistake activity for progress. This is the action trap.
One pattern I see frequently is the need to intervene and pivot when results aren’t where they should be. The bigger the gap, the bigger the intervention. It makes sense psychologically. Leaders are expected to act, and a sweeping transformation looks a lot more impressive than a small adjustment to how managers conduct their weekly meetings.
But have you asked yourself how the intervention changes the experiences people have and the beliefs they will draw from those experiences? If you’re changing ten things simultaneously, you are engaging in what I call squirrel leadership.
You have a plan and then— squirrel!
Squirrel leaders rarely create the kind of steady experiences people need to see to trust your leadership decision making. The belief you create is that—squirrel!
This is also why I think leaders need to get more comfortable with experimentation. Make a change. Observe the response. Ask people what they’re experiencing. Look at the results. Then decide what to adjust next.
That doesn’t mean every organizational challenge can be solved one variable at a time. Businesses are complicated, and sometimes circumstances demand several changes at once. But even then, leaders should be deliberate about what they’re trying to influence and how they’ll know whether it’s working.
There’s a human cost to ignoring this principle, too. Every new initiative asks employees to rethink how they work. When leaders introduce five changes at once, people have to figure out five new sets of expectations while still being held accountable for the same business results. Eventually, the change itself becomes an obstacle to performance.
And then leadership wonders why employees are resistant.
Joe’s triathlon rule is ultimately about learning. Every adjustment gives you information. Every result tells you something about what to try next. But only if you’re paying attention.
Before launching your next big transformation, ask yourself a simpler question: What’s one thing we could change that would make the biggest difference in how our people show up and do their work?
Start there. See what happens.
Elsewhere in Culture
Shackleton Created the Crisis. Why Do We Teach Him as the Hero? | With co-host Martin Gutmann
We love celebrating leaders who overcome impossible odds. But what if they created the crisis in the first place? I revisited my conversation with leadership professor Martin Gutmann about why we reward dramatic leadership, overlook quiet competence, and confuse fixing your own mistakes with extraordinary leadership. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000795923313 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2sZ0hdKWEC33RkxpBLlI7D?si=a2366692dbe94fde
If You Cannot Explain Who Owns It, Do Not Automate It | With co-host John Frehse
Everyone wants AI to make work faster. But faster doesn’t always mean better. I talked with my co-host John Frehse about what happens when companies automate workflows without clear ownership, creating bottlenecks in other departments and leaving critical responsibilities in limbo. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000796106430 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1wTvhZXvtTxFSMQ8r3ku07?si=c68e4782e10e4610
Geopolitical Risk: What Happens When Your Strategy Is Wrong? | With co-host John Frehse
Tariffs, wars, economic uncertainty. You can plan for disruption, but you can’t predict everything. I talked with my co-host John Frehse about why cultural agility matters more than having the perfect contingency plan, and how the decisions leaders make under pressure reveal what they actually stand for. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000796282838 Spotify: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ceo-daily-brief-with-dr-jessica-kriegel/id1725350421?i=1000796282838
And coming later this week…
Three Questions Before Your Next Acquisition | The Work Signal
Success can make CEOs dangerously confident. In the latest edition of The Work Signal, in partnership with SHRM, I explored research on more than 400 acquisitions and shared three questions every CEO should ask before making their next big deal. Because a winning streak doesn’t automatically make the next decision a good one.
When You Can’t See the Work, Manage the Results | With co-host Nick Green
If you can’t see your employees working, how do you know they’re performing? I revisited my conversation with Nick Green, co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market, about why remote work forced his company to focus on results rather than activity, and how they built an operating system that turns company values into everyday behaviors.
Last week in The Work Signal, I dug into the jobs report and a strange ritual we’ve all accepted: a preliminary estimate comes out, markets move billions of dollars and leaders start making decisions as if the number is fact.
Then it gets revised.
So what should leaders actually be paying attention to?