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I Sat on the Edge of the Bed · The b.reathe Blueprint Podcast

• Katie Harvey: Welcome to the b.reathe Conversations. This series explores how people operate as responsibility, ambition, and pressure grow over time. These are not burnout stories and they're not about fixing anything. They're calm, honest conversations about awareness, capacity, and what helps performance last. And today I'm joined by Jimmy. Thank you so much for being here. How are you? Jimmy: I'm very well thanks. Thanks for invitation. Katie Harvey: No worries. Now let's start with a little bit about you, who you are and what you do. Jimmy: Yeah, so I am a father and husband, first first out, and then in the gaps between that, a terrible golfer, a foodie, a a wine drinker, and then in the gaps between that, I run a consulting business which operates on six continents, sorry, five continents, and we focus on helping the people who are leading organizations and in the sort of mid-management to senior management of organizations. stop rowing through treacle and to get take away the the friction that gets in the way of the business performing and often causes people to burn out through frustration and difficulty. We we help them how we we show them how to get rid of that and and help them to remove that from the system that they're operating in. So their hard work actually starts to create results. Katie Harvey: Amazing. And what brought you into that space? Jimmy: I think a few things. the the idea for me of of business friction is something that's continually been sort of working its way around inside my head. You know when you're trying to do something at work and you're like, if only I could fix this thing, then we could deliver. if only I could just get my my team to do what I'm asking them to do and not ask questions. If only I could work out which of the things I'm working on is the most important one to work on, then that I could focus. If only we could just get some clarity from our boss, then everything would be easier. And there's all of these if-onlies that I I chat was challenged by during my own career, but as my corporate career, but as a consultant, seemed to become the thing that nobody was fixing. everybody fixes work harder, have a bigger target, work longer, go through a high-performing teams program, let's get some sales consultants in, let's restructure the business. And nobody targets the what what I think is the actual root cause problem, which is the friction that's getting in the way of the performance versus the actual performance itself. So I felt that it was my calling to to go and help with it. And as somebody who had burned out myself in in 2017, from a lot of those things being in place, a lot of that friction happening around me, I th I spent some time reflecting and what to do and how to fix that. And then that's where our methodology and our programs and and our offer came. came to light, which has kind of evolved over the last six or seven years. Katie Harvey: Amazing. And it it's one thing to experience burnout yourself, isn't it? Would you mind sharing a little bit about that sort of story and how that came about in twenty seventeen? Jimmy: Yeah, so I was promoted to a GM role in my mid-thirties. and I was probably ten to fifteen years younger than most of the other people around me. So immediately there came with a kind of I've got to prove myself mentality that I think a lot of us go into a promotion with. equally, the the team that I was slotting into was going through a restructure. the executive that I was reporting to was fairly what's the word? Not not very well connected. And over the course of 18 months I had three executive leaders as various people left or moved on or whatever happened. We had people taking their own lives on the executive team. We had people fighting in fighting. We had all sorts of things going on. at the same time the business was changing its business model. At the same time it was changing its physical footprint on the in terms of its campus layout and so Combining lots of old buildings into a couple of new buildings. So there's lots of disruption, lots of construction, lots of noise happening around that. we also changed our customer acquisition model from an analog to a digital, digitized model. so there was this kind of an enormous number of transformations going on. And I was one of, I think, seven GMs across the business who were basically told to just get on with it and keep the wheels turning and keep making money. I remember one day. the the government of the country that I was working with changed the the immigration rules which meant that half of the people that would potentially be coming to our organization were now no not able to get in. so instantly our customer acquisition process was was massively impacted. We took a sort of $20 million impact overnight and I was summoned the next morning and told to just fix it, make it work. And so I was pushing myself really, really hard all the time, working sort of 20 hour days traveling an awful lot into overseas markets to do meetings and sales. So I was offshore probably 10 days out of 30. And it just started to catch up with me. I noticed that I was increasingly tired, pushing myself over and over and over again. I'd feel sick in the morning before I went to work because I knew of all the drama that was waiting and it'd be 75 emails of drama waiting to be dealt with. started to drink wine excessively to try and sort of calm my nerves. But then you wake up with a hangover, so then you take your paracetamol and Coke Zero to kind of get going again. it was and there was this kind of this endless cycle of unhealthiness. skipping the gym, skipping social functions, ski eating takeaways because I was too tired to cook. And it just went on and on until I got to this point in in twenty seventeen where I I remember waking up in the morning and I was hungover and I sat on the edge of the bed and I thought to myself, if I if I don't Do something different. I'm either going to kill myself or I'm going to kill somebody from, you know, an accident or from something. I need to make a change. And so that was the day I went in, I resigned, and I started sort of re-rebuilding my life from from scratch. But it was, it was a fairly unpleasant descent into a very difficult situation that I think a lot of people find themselves in and they don't, they're not equipped to deal with it. They don't know why it's happening, they don't know. what the signs and symptoms are early to catch it before it becomes too late. And they don't know the the com long term sort of consequences that can have on on your life and your health and and your family and everything. So it's it's something that I'm very passionate about now, helping people prevent by showing them a few signals, showing them some techniques that are going to stop it happening to them and also ideally stop it happening in their teams as well. Katie Harvey: Wow, it sounds like you went through a hell of a lot during that time and so many things were changing within the business that you were just thrown headfirst into. Knowing what you know now, is there anything that you would have done differently when taking that role or potentially maybe not accepting a promotion? Jimmy: I I think I probably still would have done it. I think my approach would be different nowadays. you know, the benefit of wisdom is is and hindsight is 2020. I think there's a couple of things that you know anybody who's listening who might find themselves in a a a reasonably disconnected friction f frictionful environment could use would be first of all, we do this to ourselves. I made the choice to stay. I made the choice to work those extra hours, those weekends. I made the choice to overcommit myself and skip the gym and skip the social functions and eat and drink the wrong things. we do this to ourselves. I call it justifying because we say, I'll just, you know, I'll just miss this social function. I'll just just grab a takeaway on the way home. I'll just open the bottle of wine and then I'll just finish it. so we justify to ourselves. So if you're finding yourself in that situation where you're noticing those early signs and symptoms. That's something that I wish I could have changed. I wish I'd wish somebody had been there to tell me that. That actually burnout starts. I I use the use the analogy of a a w like when you pull the plug out of the bath and you get that little whirlpool effect called the Coriolis effect. when if you're a little rubber ducky and you're sat on the edge of that whirlpool, you can swim out of it initially quite easily because the water water's not going very fast and the current's not very strong. But when when you get to the center of that whirlpool, rubber duckies aren't gonna be able to escape. Because the whirlpool is going so fast and the suction is is so much greater. And the same thing happens with burnout. If you if you're justifying in the early stages, you can make some changes. You know, maybe change your role, maybe change the way you look at your role, maybe get some help from a coach, but you can deal with it. If you get to the later stages, things are starting to stack up and so bad decisions start to heap on bad decisions. Fatigue is on top of fatigue, and it just gets worse and worse and worse. So that was one of the things I wish I had known. is what are the signs and symptoms. The the second piece I I wish I'd known is it it wasn't oftentimes we believe as an employee that our boss just expects us to do all these things. and we convince ourselves that you know because our boss has given us this list of stuff to do and then just keeps adding to it and keeps adding to it, that it's not okay to go back to them and talk to them about the workload. And often You know, the biggest difference between a high performance leader and an effective leader is the high performance leader knows where to spend their time and energy most effectively for greatest impact and value creation. An effective leader tries to do everything. And so actually over a period of time they become fatigued and ineffective. So your job as a as a as a leader is to choose where do I put my time and energy? Where do I where do I focus today for greatest effect? greatest impact and value on the business. And often your boss doesn't realize all the things you've got going on. And so they keep adding because they're like, well, this is important and this is important and this is important. And remember as well, your boss is operating in even more ambiguity than you are. So they're just like, I'm so busy. I'll just give that to Jimmy. And he'll hopefully deal with it. And then so Jimmy's sitting there going, my God, I've got all these things on my plate and I don't know what to do. So I I I actually stole this technique From a friend of mine who works in in Fire and Emergency New Zealand. And what he does is he gets all these things he's working on that's keeping him up at night, that's making him really busy, puts them all in a long list, walks in to see his boss on their one-on-one catch-up, and says, before I start, what I'm gonna do is just spend a minute reading all the things I'm working on. And you tell me which three you want to hear about. And this is just the biggest genius I I've ever heard. Because what it does is it helps you work out. What your boss thinks is important and therefore probably what you should be working on. And the rest of the stuff might be medium importance, but it's not what we call the crocodile closest to the canoe. It's not the biggest fire that needs to be put out right now. Might be next week, might be later this week. But for now, your boss wants to hear about those three things. So then you can take that and you can manage your workload a little bit more effectively. And then we have a secondary piece of that technique, which is called sharing risk and assumptions, which is okay, so based on those three that you've told me. I'm gonna start to switch these off, or I'm gonna slow this one down, or I'm gonna switch that one out for this one so I can focus here for this week. And that will help me to manage the number of things I'm involved in based on importance as accorded by my boss. So you're not asking them to tell you what to do, you're asking them to tell you what they think is important. And so they're probably the two things I ri wish I'd really known is what are the signs and symptoms of burnout that are coming. that I could pay attention to and do something about because I'm starting to pay attention to them early and going to my boss and working out with them collaboratively what's important so I know where to focus my energy and time. Katie Harvey: It's funny, isn't it? Communication is such such a big part of being a leader. But often when the leader is burnt out themselves, that kind of gets completely thrown away. And actually it it means the rest of the team suffer. And what you said about actually being a high performing leader versus effective leader is very impactful because there's probably quite a few people listening today. Knowing that they're doing everything and trying to do everything, but they're not a high-performing leader, they are just an effective leader. And that can be quite Jimmy: Yeah. Katie Harvey: hard to swallow sometimes, and that can be quite hard to notice. I always say that burnout is kind of like having an addiction, like the first step to that and solving it is admitting that you have it. And most people don't want to admit that they have burnout. So, how do you work with your clients and your leaders to actually help them acknowledge that? they are in a state of burnout and this is something that they do need to actively work on Jimmy: Yeah, this is this is a really good question because nobody likes to be told their baby is ugly. Katie Harvey: Yeah. Jimmy: and so if you go into an organization and and I've made these mistakes before, you go into an organization and say, look, you're you're the signs and symptoms of burnout are all over your business. There's a real culture problem here. We've got to do something to fix it. Unfortunately, most people don't respond to that very well. so we have to come at it from a different angle, hence the the high performance angle. you are aspirationally trying to be a high performer and you're trying to do that by achieving everything. Unfortunately, by trying to achieve everything, you're doing the exact opposite of what makes high performance. We've got to get some focus in and start trimming the the friction, the the treacle that you're rowing through. we've got to work out where that is and what that problem is. And normally you can undercover that pretty quickly by asking some basic questions. we we use a full diagnostic process, which takes, you know. Probably an hour or so to go through for each individual, but then we take all that data and we we aggregate it. But if I if I talk about it at a very simple level, can you go to a leadership team and say, so what's the purpose of this team? And they all write down their own version and we compare the results. And if the results are not aligned, then we know we've got a misalignment in the business. And if the executive team or the leadership team is misaligned, then they're making priority calls, resource calls, effort and impact calls in different directions, which can then pull people, either pull people into silos or put people working like I'm rowing as hard as I can this way and you're rowing as hard as you can the opposite way. and neither of us and the boat's not going anywhere. So we we talk about that. We talk we go and talk to what we b think are the busiest, the hardest roles in the business is the is the mid management. So people who are managing managers. and we say, you know, what are your priorities? What are you working on right now that's the most important thing? when was the last time you took some time out to really think and reflect? how often do you get to do deep work on a weekly basis? how effective is your team? And so we've got a no, there's probably a series of about 80 questions that are asked, but and those are some examples of them. But very quickly, you know, you get to see people's both their facial expression, their micro expressions, and the answers they give. And that gives having done this for a long time now, we've done this now over 3,000 times. this gives you a very, very quick perspective on, yeah, this is a business we can help, or this isn't a business we can help. the the th the probably the last piece that that we've learned as well over time is a lot of people know that they're rowing through friction, you know, rowing through treacle. but there isn't a genuine appetite to fix it in the leadership team. So they say all the right things. yeah, leadership's really important and we want to invest in our people and we want to get our engagement scores up and people people we want to stop people leaving and make it a great workplace to come to every day and you can bring your whole self and we hear all these taglines, but they're still doing all the things that are burning their people out and causing them to leave and disengaging them. and so one of my sort of key parts is is talking to the executive and really genuinely understanding how committed are they to fixing this. Or is this just another of the 50 initiatives they've got going on? that they're just, you know, we'll do this because we've got to tick a box, as opposed to this is genuinely the thing that we have to get right before our business can succeed. And and it feels counterintuitive. You know, asking people to slow down and do less and focus more, feels like, but one, I'm not gonna get everything done and and and I and it's gonna cause our business some problems, and I don't have time to do that right now. And when I when we're less busy, we'll we'll we'll do that stuff. And unfortunately, they're the wrong answers because that that means it's not it's not gonna happen because you'll never be less busy and things will never slow down. So unless you consciously take control of the hamster wheel that you're running on, it you you can't do anything different. Katie Harvey: Yeah, it's funny you say that. One of the biggest pet peeves I have is when people stay up till one a.m. working and only function on four or five hours sleep. And I'm like, it's completely counterintuitive. Like if you actually slept properly, you would get the work that you're doing at one a.m. done twice as quick and with more focus and productivity. And it Jimmy: Yep. Katie Harvey: seems backwards, but it's not like rest and recovery is so, so important. And it enhances your focus, it enhances your productivity and enhances your creativity for all these ideas and problem solving. The more fatigued you are, the more tired you are, the worse that gets. So it's super important that people do take a step back and kind of look over things. It's why holidays tend to be the the place that CEOs and founders get their best ideas, because they're actually away from the desk, away from the business. and what you said there about culture as well is super important. I think that you do occasionally get the wrong team members. but do you ever find doing your kind of audits and questions that you go through that there's a lot the right people there but potentially in the wrong spots? Jimmy: Sometimes yes. one of the one of the things that I've noticed as the years have gone on and we've started to create tools and facilities to support this, is people's managers often don't know very much about their people. they think they do and they think they care about them. and you know with the best best intentions, they they they try. But it's very interesting if you look at the statistics and we have. On average, ninety ninety five percent of managers say they care about their people. And we've got engagement stats from companies like Gallup that show that only about twenty-five per se p percent of people, or twenty percent of people now are engaged, and more than three quarters are not engaged or disengaged. And part of the reason that they're not engaged or disengaged is because their boss doesn't know what they want or talk to them about anything. So you know, i in in the HR world you'd call it a talent conversation or a development conversation. But essentially it's sitting down with somebody and saying, What's important to you to achieve in this job? And have you got any skills and talents that we're not tapping into? And what would you like to do next? And how can we make that happen for you? And we don't see those conversations happening in organizations. So what happens is somebody's pigeonholed in it, you're quite good on the computer. You can go and be the computer person. or you know, you you come in as a finance grad. So let's leave you in finance for the rest of your career. And people might say, Well, yeah, maybe I came in as a finance grad, but Do you know what that supply chain stuff looks really interesting and I'd like to go there? So we see people often who are jaded because they've just been left in their role with no development, no no conversations about development, no conversations about aspirations, and with untapped skills and talents that that are just the most incredible things that could contribute to a business. And I'll give you a perfect example. I was working with an a manufacturing organization and They we initiated these conversations. And somebody who was in the commercial team was actually a fully Google console, Google Analytics qualified person. They had clawed courses under their belt. They had all this AI stuff that they'd been doing in their own time because they were interested in it. then at the same time, they'd spent six months trying to recruit somebody who could help them implement AI into the business. And so this would through the conversations that we we encouraged the leaders to create, we managed to move this person. And they took over AI implementation for this whole business. It's a half a billion dollar business. It's a significant entity. But without that, that person would have been in the wrong role being a being a you know an analyst, being something relatively minor and in in inconvenient, not tapping into their talents. So often we do find that people who who get frustrated, disengaged, and burn out are because they're left to fester. They don't feel like there's any support, they don't feel like anybody cares about them, they don't feel like anybody is listening to them. And they're the difference that they can make is is minimal. So they go through they they become the rubber ducky in the whirlpool. Katie Harvey: Yeah, and I guess for for humans, like we are designed to work hard. Our our work hard and reward scheme is is internal and we should be working hard for the things that we want. But unfortunately, if we get left alone and we get bored and we don't get challenged, that's where things do, like you said, you become the the duck in the whirlpool and we don't want we don't want to be the duck. Jimmy: No. Katie Harvey: so for for people that are listening, maybe that are recognizing some of this in themselves, maybe some of it in their teams. What would you say should be the starting point if someone is kind of very overwhelmed? It is quite overwhelming to hear for the first time that you may be in this position. So where would you say is the best place to start? Jimmy: well, we've actually got some free resources that people can do to get a bit of a check on you know, is what I'm feeling, what Jimmy's talking about. so if you go to jblhighperformance dot com slash assessment, and in there there's there's two assessments. Number one is am I the bottleneck? and so that assessment is basically is am I the one causing this myself? Like I'm am I the one taking everything on and trying to solve everything and being the expert and answering all the questions and at the center of everything? And if so, what can I do about that? the other assessment is find the friction. So what what's going on in our in my team around me or in our business that's causing some of these problems and and what to do about it. So I think you know it's all it's very hard to solution something until you've diagnosed it effectively. So you might have heard a few things that resonated today in terms of I'm feeling I'm feeling some of those things. But you know, a lot of a lot of diseases have the same symptoms and you've got to get specific. So you might be on the road to burnout. You might just be tired. You might just be stressed. You might just be overworked. And so it's not necessarily a guarantee that you are rubber ducky on the way to burnout. You might have some of the early signs and symptoms, of which there are signs and symptoms of lots of things. So I recommend going and doing one of those diagnostic assessments. So say they're free. You can do them and it sends you a nice report and it tells you all what to do next. But that's a good place to start because it's like, let's draw a line in the sound and find out where I'm at, and then find out where I'm at, and then I can go and do something about it. You know, it's the equivalent of let's not type into Google my symptoms and try and work out what it is rather than going and seeing a doctor. Because you could probably scare yourself on Dr. Google that you've got some horrendous disease and it might be something very minor. so I encourage that. The other piece is if you're a leader, is start looking out for. some of those signs and symptoms in other people around you. So if you are seeing people in your team leave, if you're seeing people in your team who are really anxious all the time, who are overtired, who are working really late, who are pulling back from team events and just hunkering down in a little little pod, not interacting with other people, if you see previously good employees who've come off the boil and just seem to be existing and you know just turning up and going through the motions, Then maybe that's something for you to pay attention to in the way you're leading them and also offer some support to them so they can try and get some of this stuff sorted. And again, you might put point them towards the assessments, or you might just have an open grown-up conversation about, hey, look, what's going on and how can I help you fix that? The the the sad part of this is if you're a good manager who cares about this type of stuff, you're probably doing it. And if you're not and you're probably listening to a podcast like this and you're probably picking up some tips. if you're not a good manager, you're probably not listening to this podcast and you probably don't care or you probably haven't got the the the headspace to be able to do this for your team. So it it's unfortunate that that's the reality of the life we live in, the world we live in. but I think, you know, those those basic steps are are quite a useful first couple. Katie Harvey: Amazing. And for those who definitely recognise burnout in themselves, maybe they've been listening to a few episodes of the podcast. They may have read the book. They may have done an assessment like yours already. And they know that they're burnout, but they just don't know where to start. What would be your top three tips to start getting back to where they should be and start feeling like themselves again? Just small, easy things that they can jump into. Jimmy: Yeah, great conf great question. number one is go and have a conversation with your manager with the list and go what's the three important three most important things that I I should be focusing on that you want to hear about. get some prioritization into your life. second piece, we use a essentially a tolerance of eighty percent capacity. So you need to slow down so you're not operating at a hundred and twenty percent all the time. You need to be operating at 80%. So that might mean saying no to meetings that are recurring meetings or that are low point, low, low value that you could send somebody else to, or you could just say, Hey, can you send me the report afterwards? Do I need to be there for all of it? you need to get rid of some of your workload. So that we have a a playbook that we use, but essentially it's the what can I stop, slow down, or swap based on the value and impact of its outcome? so what can I get rid of? or hand off to somebody else or do next quarter versus this quarter because off 99 times out of a hundred, not everything has to be done today. you know, there are things that you could slow down. So work out what's important today, do that today. Last one is close your laptop once a week at 5 p.m. Go home, do something you want to do and go to bed early. That one day a week can often become a lifeline. Wednesdays are a great day to do it because it just kind of helps you recharge. But just literally close your laptop at five o'clock. The work will be there in the morning. You know it's going to still be there. So just go home and do something you want to do and go to bed early, get a good night's sleep and then start again with a fresh head in the morning. You would be surprised how much of a difference that could make. Katie Harvey: I absolutely love that last one. I think it's so important to go and do something that you just enjoy and totally consumes you in a different way that work does. And for me, mine's Muay Thai. I think that everyone should do some sort of martial arts in their life. I think it's amazing. But if you just even if it's going to knit or go for a walk or play golf, anything bonus if it includes some movement and some exercise, that always helps. but anything, even if it's going to see a friend at a pub. That's that's better than nothing. And your function on eighty percent. That's really resonated with me. 'Cause my mantra for this year for myself was eighty percent is okay. so I really, really like that one, that resonated a lot. Any final sentiments before we round off today's episode? Jimmy: I guess it's just a sense of empathy, you know, having been through this myself, and nearly done it again to myself a few years ago through, you know, habits. I I feel for you if you're going through this. It's hard, it's really tough and it can often feel very lonely as well. Like nobody else understands what I'm going through, nobody else gets it. if if you are in that situation and you just need somebody to talk to. sounds like Katie's a great resource. I'm also very happy for anybody just to reach out. on LinkedIn or or via my website and just say, hey, look, I just need talk. Can you help me for a few minutes? and often, you know, I've I think I've started some of my most valuable relationships just by talking somebody off a ledge. I mean I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna I'm I'm done. I can't do any more. And just showing them a little something different that they can't see right now, but hey, this might help. Just try this for a couple of weeks. That can really help. So if that feels like you and you just need to talk, then just reach out. And I'm I'm really happy to be of support. Katie Harvey: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective so openly. Conversations like this exist to normalise experiences that many people are going through quietly as life and responsibility grow. If anything in this episode landed, I'd love for you to do one of two things. You can either take the Success Hangover check-in using the link in the show notes, or you can take Jimmy's high performance check-in. What was it called again? Jimmy: so am I the bottleneck and friction finder. Katie Harvey: Perfect. And I will put his link in the show notes as well. It takes just a couple of minutes on my one and probably a few minutes on Jimmy's and it will show you where your performance is costing you. Or you can grab a copy of my book, The Success Hangover, the Amazon UK number one bestseller on Amazon. If you found any of this useful, please leave a review or share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you would like to reach out to Jimmy, how can they do so? Jimmy: probably the easiest way is JBLhighperformance dot com and follow the the links or find me on LinkedIn, Jimmy Burroughs. Katie Harvey: Amazing. Thank you so much. And I will see you all next week.