🏋️♂️ THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES PLAYBOOK: Week 3 – Weightlifting & The Myth of Infinite Resilience
In my first week in a new role, I held 1-1s with my new team and was immediately taken aback by how utterly drained everyone was, particularly the team leader.
I asked the team leader to quantify exactly what they were doing day-to-day. A quick audit revealed the systemic truth: the team had quietly absorbed the majority of a manager's responsibilities on top of their own work. They weren't failing; they were completely wiped out from carrying twice their operational weight.
When we rebalanced the workload and restored structural support, motivation and performance surged. But the most telling part came after: the team admitted they had previously been told they simply "lacked resilience."
Welcome to Week 3 of the Commonwealth Games Series! 🥇📊
🎯 The "Resilience" Trap: Individualizing a Systemic Pathology
If you watch elite weightlifting, you know there is a precise, mathematical limit to human capacity. A lifter doesn't fail to lift a loaded barbell over their head because they lack heart; they fail because gravity and biomechanics are uncompromising.
When the weight loaded onto the bar exceeds physical capacity, the structure buckles (And as someone who manages to trip over their own feet most days, I have immense respect for athletes who can lift twice their body weight above their heads without toppling over.)
In corporate environments, leadership teams frequently ignore the laws of capacity.
When project deadlines compress and teams burn out, organizations often diagnose the issue through a flawed lens: Our people need to be more resilient. They need time management training or wellness support.
Using Carol Bacchi’s WPR (What’s the Problem Represented to be?) diagnostic framework , we must ask: How is the problem being represented here? Key point right here 👇
By framing burnout as a personal resilience issue, the organisation implicitly absolves its own systemic practices, like unmanaged workload creep, of blame. The implicit message becomes: The bar isn't too heavy; you just aren't strong enough to lift it.
This is a classic systemic pathology. You cannot solve a structural workload failure by telling an overloaded team to be more "resilient."
🧠 Balancing Systemic Capacity with High Performance
Elite weightlifters do not train at maximum load every day. High-performance coaches carefully manage load cycles, track recovery metrics, and restructure schedules to prevent structural failure.
To build sustainable, high-performing operational systems, consider three diagnostic steps:
Audit the Bar Weight: Quantify the actual operational load. Ask teams to list every task they have absorbed before assuming they are underperforming.
Stop Diagnosing Fatigue as Weakness: Reframe burnout from an individual resilience shortfall to a structural load failure.
Build Strategic Deload Cycles: Rebalance workloads and build intentional recovery periods into long-term planning to protect top talent.
High performance isn't about loading the bar until your team breaks. It’s about managing structural capacity so your organization can deliver champion results repeatedly.
👉 Hit follow and ring the bell 🔔 on my profile as we wrap up our high-performance diagnostic series!
👇 To the leaders and strategists in my network: How does your organisation distinguish between genuine high performance and structural overload? Let’s discuss in the comments.
Originally Published on Linkedin
#OrganizationalDesign #SystemsThinking #Leadership #Operations #CommonwealthGames #WorkplaceBurnout #StrategicAlignment #HighPerformance
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