Strategic Focus: Why We Can’t Think Big When We’re Drowning in the Small

How culture rewards busyness over breakthroughs, and how we can stop asking for what we don't make space to receive. Best suited for leaders, managers, and teams.

Pretty much all my professional conversations with clients, providers, and partners go like this when we meet:

“Hey! How’s everything going?”

“Oh, this week is packed. I’m drowning in work. We’re pushing very hard with the team, but we’re going to make it.”

These statements can occur at year-end, before tax season, or at the beginning of any quarter. It doesn't matter; it's a state of perpetual emergency. Week after week, people give the same answer, heavy with overwhelm, dense with fatigue.

I imagine them like generals at war, wearing the uniform, medals, and recognitions of honor dangling from both shoulders, as if their exhaustion were proof of their worth. I am not making fun of anyone being busy, because these days, people put in more hours than they ever have before, and somehow, it is never quite enough.

Even when teams succeed and meet their targets, by the time they start the new fiscal year, there is already a new goal, a higher hill to climb, another demand that pushes them harder.

It is never the right time to enjoy what you have built, nor is it the time to take pride in what you do for a living. The game is to paint, brush, and push yourself as hard as possible, and then do it all again.

When people put in more and more effort, and no one even offers a simple thank you, sooner or later, something breaks and saps the motivation to do anything. They stop wanting to push twice as hard, three times as hard, without seeing any real progress in their lives.

Which person in the right frame of mind would grind themselves to the ground for nothing in return? Would you?

People are also asked not to get lost in the daily operational churn, but to be swift at managing time and stress, delegating tasks so that they can be “more strategic.” Balancing operational and strategic tasks has become a Cirque du Soleil act in our fast-moving lives.

Operational tasks are what keep the boat afloat, what keep a company running every day. Strategic tasks are what decide where that boat is going, which new sea it will cross, and which new land it will discover. However, the two types of tasks have distinctly different natures and energies.

Operational work is about staying where you are and ensuring that what you know continues to run smoothly, just as it has always done. Strategic work encourages people to challenge the status quo and adopt a different perspective.

Operational tasks may be repetitive, boring, and overwhelming, but also familiar and predictable. Strategic plans do not follow a clearly defined path; they reveal bits of the trail along the way and demand tremendous mental power.

When people feel the pressure of increasing demands, handling operational tasks becomes both a necessity and a comfortable blanket that makes them feel productive and meaningful.

When you call on someone to be strategic, to propose an alternative or even a disruptive solution, you are inviting change, which means you need to be ready to hear it and take action. Change is good, but are you truly prepared to step into it?

I have never met a person who did not have ideas, at least one solid one, no matter how small. Wherever they stand in an organization, people see something. They always have a sense of why things work and how they could be better. But when it comes time to share those ideas, they often hit walls of resistance, facing leaders who, at best, acknowledge what they say but take no action.

As humans, we care deeply about our voices because they carry everything we are, our values, dreams, and contributions. Failing to acknowledge someone’s voice is one of the fastest ways to erode motivation, because it kills the impulse to try, whether the idea is sharp or the solution clever.

The dynamics of wanting people to work efficiently and strategically have more to do with the culture in which they operate than with their abilities alone.

I am not saying we cannot improve. On an individual level, there is always something to learn or sharpen. But collectively, we often have more resources than we realize, in cultures that do not support their expression.

Because if you want people to be busy all the time, if you make it a badge of honor to leave work late, if you never create the space for them to think elsewhere, to cross-pollinate, to generate something new, then you are building a culture that claims to want change but only rewards more of the same.

If you ask for ideas but never acknowledge them, if you ask for unconventional thinking but refuse to create the space to listen because you are too busy protecting the status quo, then the problem is not the people. It is the system.

The system is not separate from the people. Every choice, every reaction, every habit creates or blocks the conditions for real change. If you want to instill new behavior, you need to create the conditions that make it possible and reinforce it, even through something as simple as a thank you. You can't just ask people to change without modeling that behavior.

This mechanism affects everyone; it does not favor one over the other, whether it is the CEO or the receptionist. Culture permeates every corner of a place, and unless you create the conditions for the behavior you want to see, anything else is merely wishful thinking.

Does the system support the changes you seek?

Strategic insights and breakthroughs do not always appear when you sit people in a room and ask them to think. They spark in odd moments, when the mind is free, when the brain can finally breathe on the way home, during a quiet lunch, when stress, performance anxiety, and conflict are not choking the air.

Because stress, and more stress, and the tensions that come with it do not help anyone think more strategically, and certainly do not help the effort to work more efficiently.

The real gap between operational and strategic work is not solely a matter of individual ability, but rather a culture that demands newness and clings to the familiar.

The real solution lies in understanding how every choice shapes the system that either creates or hinders the conditions for genuine change.

PAUSE. LEARN. MOVE ON.

The deepest layers of culture rest on shared assumptions, unspoken patterns so deeply ingrained that people stop noticing them. These behaviors run quietly beneath the surface, shaping the way an organization operates without anyone needing to name them.

Organizational psychologist Edgar Schein spent decades studying how culture shapes what is possible within a system. His work demonstrates that culture is not what we declare or intend; it is what we reward, what we tolerate, and what we repeatedly do.

When the structures we build honor busyness over insight and efficiency over reflection, we should not expect strategy to emerge. We can’t ask for change while designing everything to resist it. What we model, acknowledge, and make space for shapes the culture, and that’s what decides if change can take root.

You can reach Stephen at stephen@alygn.company