The capacity crisis

In this letter

• One framework: The Leadership Equation

• One truth: we have a capacity crisis, and we've been calling it burnout

• One move: rate your demands, rank your resources

• One line to take with you

Reading time: 4 minutes.

We were sitting at dinner, James and I, and somewhere between the appetizers and the main course we both just said it. We are gassed.

Not complaining. Just honesty without performing. Two leaders, two full plates, one admission: this season is a lot.

I got home on Friday after a week that felt like being dropped at the dog park and told to run laps until someone came to get me. I walked through the door and sat down and did not move for a while. My body made the decision before my brain could argue with it.

Here is what that week looked like on paper. One hundred and seventy something days to my biggest event of the year. One hundred and fifty-ish days until my book launches.

A media tour in the works. A growing team. The world shifting daily. Six years of work closing at once, all of it accelerating at the same time. The demands of this season are sitting at a nine out of ten. Maybe a nine plus.

That number matters, because it determines everything that comes next…

The question I had to sit with on Friday was not “how do I push through this”.

It was: are my resources matching my demands right now?

Because if the demands are a nine and the resources are a six, the math doesn’t math. When the math does not work, depletion is not a possibility. It is just a matter of time before you’re running on empty.

I know what it looks like when I am trying to muscle through a season instead of hold steady inside one.

I get quieter with the people I love. My friend cup goes a little empty because the calendar does not have room for it.

I start cutting the things that fill me first, because they feel optional, and they are not optional. They are the infrastructure.

Talking it through with James reminded me to use the tools I already have. I teach this because I need it too, and that night I needed the reminder as much as anyone.

THE LEADERSHIP EQUATION

When demands exceed resources, reactivity replaces creativity.

Adding demand to a depleted system does not produce growth. It produces collapse.

We have a capacity crisis. We have been calling it burnout, and that name is costing us the right solution.

Burnout implies you did too much. 

Capacity crisis means the demands exceeded the resources, and the gap is where the damage happens.

Ambition isn’t the problem. Depletion is. Those are not the same statement, and the difference matters enormously when you are trying to figure out what to do next.

When demands exceed resources, creativity collapses and reactivity takes its place.

The decisions get worse.
The patience runs thin.
The leadership gets smaller and louder at the same time.

And the harder part: the demands are not going down, they keep piling on. The world  keeps raising the ceiling of what is possible, which means the expectations of what is required keep rising with it. There is no version of this where anyone asks less of you.

The only variable you control is how resourced you are to meet it.

This is where the two levels matter. 

There is the micro: 
The daily practices that keep your nervous system regulated. The 10 minute walk between meetings. Eating real meals. The phone off the nightstand. Self-care appointments already booked in your calendar through December so it actually happens.

These are not luxuries. They are the operating system. Without them, every other system runs slower.

And then there is the macro: 
The structural decisions that determine whether sustainability is even possible in this season. Who is carrying what. What is a yes and what is a no.

Where you are trying to solve a structural problem with a personal habit, which never works. Principle nine of the Well-Resourced Leader says it plainly: the strongest leaders are not self-sufficient. They are well-supported. 

This season, well-supported is a strategy, not a preference.

Holding steady in a high-demand season requires both levels working. 

The micro keeps you functional day to day.

The macro keeps the season from becoming the rest of your life.

The shift this week

Stop asking how do I get through this. That is survival mode.

Start asking: are my resources equal to my demands right now. That is how you lead through a hard season instead of just enduring it.

If the answer is no, that gap is the work.

Not the to-do list. Not the next hire. The gap. The leaders who hold steady in hard seasons are not doing less.

They are resourced to the level the season requires. That is the only way this works.

Your next move

Rate your demands right now, out of ten. Be honest.

Then rate your resources across the six leadership currencies: physical energy, emotional capacity, mental bandwidth, time, relational capital ( people to support you ), financial resources.

One score out of ten for each. Where is the gap?

That gap is not a failure. It’s a structural problem, and structural problems require structural solutions.

Find one place this week where you can add support, reduce drain, or protect what is filling you before this season asks you to give it away.

Three prompts to sit with

1. Where are my demands right now, honestly, out of ten?

2. Which of my six currencies is most depleted, and what would it take to move that number by even one point this week?

3. What am I treating as optional that is actually infrastructure?

One line to take with you

Holding steady is a discipline. It asks more of you than pushing through ever will.

Leadership that lasts,

Mandy

P.S. Chasing Enough comes out this fall. If this season is asking a lot of you, the book goes deeper on exactly this. Pre-order your copy here. [ Chasing Enough ]