Uncomfortable Truth

Unpopular Opinion Incoming!

The most interrupted person in your building is probably your best one. And leadership is almost certainly the reason why. Watch who people go to when they have a quick question. A quick favor. A quick thought that couldn't wait until after lunch.

Watch whose doorway has the most traffic. Whose Slack notifications never stop. Whose focus time gets consumed before it ever really starts.

That person isn't struggling because they can't manage their workload. They're struggling because everyone else's lack of planning keeps becoming their emergency. And somewhere along the way the organization quietly decided that was acceptable.

Here is what nobody wants to say out loud.

Every time a leader fails to develop their team's ability to solve problems independently - they create an interruption tax on the one person who can. Every time a manager escalates something they should have handled - they make a withdrawal from the same account. Every time "just ask so and so" becomes the answer instead of actually building capability in the people asking - the tax compounds. And the invoice always goes to the same person. The high performer.

And just like that the deep work is gone. The groove they spent forty five minutes building evaporates in ninety seconds. And they start over. Then we wonder why they seem disengaged. Why they're staying late. Why they're starting to look like someone who is carrying more than their share. They are. Just not in the way anyone is measuring.

Here is the most uncomfortable version of this truth. If your best people are always accessible - you haven't built a capable team. You've built a dependency, dressed it up as collaboration, and judged based on your idea of output.

Protect the high performers. Not from the work - from the organizational failures that keep landing on their desk disguised as quick questions. That is where your capacity is going. And until someone names it - it will keep going there.