Managing people is hard. It is one of the most complex, emotional, high-stakes jobs you can take on, and most people get thrown into it with little more than a title change and a hearty handshake from your higher ups. There’s a secondary rant in here somewhere about how utterly ridiculous that is and it’s no wonder there are SO MANY terrible managers out there, but today is not that day.

Today I want to acknowledge the sudden culture shock of managing.

If you are sending emails at 11 p.m., your team assumes they should be too. If you cancel vacation, they cancel theirs. If you brag about how little sleep you get, they start believing exhaustion is part of the job description.

You don’t need to say it directly, because your behavior does all the talking. And what it is telling people is that burnout is the standard here. That is not leadership, it is negligence, and I don’t want you to be surprised when you suddenly find yourself on a team with a whole lotta burnout.

A lot of leaders are deeply uncomfortable not knowing something. Somewhere along the way, they got the message that leaders should always have a plan, always have an answer, always be ten steps ahead. So they start faking it, bluffing their way through conversations and isolating themselves in ivory towers, convinced they have to project certainty. They keep pretending they have all the answers, like some kind of shitty Merlin without the cool dragons or the magic.

It’s trendy and cool for companies to look like they care about their people.

You know the drill. There’s a cool yoga app stipend and a Slack channel full of cutesy self care memes. Someone in HR announces “we’re prioritizing wellness this quarter” and suddenly there’s a soothing pastel-colored slide somewhere about breathing exercises.

It all looks nice on a recruiting page. It also does nothing to fix the actual problems that drive people out the door.

Some weeks….or months don’t feel like leadership, they feel like pure triage. Your brain is juggling too many things. There are deadlines slipping through the cracks, people asking for your input on seven unrelated things, if you hear the Slack three knock sound ONE MORE TIME you’re going to WHIP YOUR LAPTOP OUT THE WINDOW, and you still haven’t figured out what’s for dinner. You’re not running at peak strategic energy, you’re just trying to get to Friday in one piece.

And yet, the team still needs you. YOU, not as a task manager, but as a leader. So what does leadership look like when you’re deep in the weeds?

In theory, processes are supposed to make work easier. They bring order to chaos, create consistency, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. A good process should remove friction, not create it.

But here’s what actually happens in most companies: processes pile up over time. One team adds a new approval step. Another adds a form. Someone decides everything needs to go through a weekly meeting. And before you know it, the process is the problem.

You ever notice how a company can be full of incredibly smart, talented people… and still get completely stuck? Stuck in their thinking. Stuck in their decision-making. Stuck in endless loops of “we’ve always done it this way.”

It’s not because they aren’t capable, it’s because it’s almost impossible to get true outside perspective when you’re inside the system. And that’s where things start to break down.

Change is inevitable. Markets shift. Tech moves faster than your IT team can say “mandatory update.” Leadership reshuffles. Some consultant somewhere declares the next big thing and suddenly everyone has to drop what they’re doing to “get aligned.”

The companies that survive are the ones that adapt. Change is good!

I mean, realistically, it sucks, but you can make it not suck.

At The Threadsmith Group, we help leaders turn uncertainty into opportunity by guiding their teams through change with confidence, clarity, and purpose.

Every company says they want collaboration. Every team wants to work smoothly together. Absolutely no company on the planet is like “yeah we hate collaboration and we love it when people don’t communicate”. And if they do, wow, yikes.

If you’ve ever worked somewhere that leadership and product weren’t aligned, you know how messy it gets. Leadership is out here talking big-picture, revenue, ARR, acquisition. Product is in the weeds with users, tech debt, and what can actually be built without setting the whole codebase aflame. When those worlds don’t line up, deadlines slip, priorities shuffle weekly, and everyone burns out.

Strategy is only as good as execution.