High performance: how do you spend your time in the valleys?

Right at the end of 2023, as we were all thinking about summer breaks, I was meeting up with different people to end the year and found myself in a conversation with one leader that’s just sat with me ever since.

It’s sat with me because so many leaders I interact with have a constant ‘under the pump’ vibe going on. Not all of own their doing, yet often, at least partially, enabled by them. But not this person. Do they have lots on? Yep. Are there periods of delivery stress? Definitely. Operating in a high paced environment with big expectations? You bet – maybe one of the most intensely scrutinised organisations in NZ at the moment. And yet, their observation about their working environment was this:

• We have high-intensity, high stakes, very public delivery points.

• We have people who know what they are doing and do it well.

• We’ve got about the right amount of resourcing.

• We take maximum advantage of low-intensity time.

A bit like an elite sports team, there are times when it’s everyone on deck, operating at peak, to get the result they need. But in-between times - when they are off the peaks and into the valleys, here’s the thing I heard about their approach: they deliberately recover, reflect, refocus. It’s all in service of being ready to go when the next high-intensity delivery point comes into view, and being better than last time at nailing it. Do they nail everything? No, of course not. But they give themselves their best chance at success by being deliberate about how they use the time between peak performance requirements.

You and your team will have different demands on your time, energy and resources. We often start the year with the work plan and knowing where we need to be ramping up the effort to scale the peaks. What if, this year, you ask your team to also identify the valleys where you’ll recover, reflect and refocus together?