The never ending catch-up

Every CXO I sit with is behind on something.The reorg that is pending. The board deck that needed to be ready yesterday. The successor who isn't ready to step up yet. The strategy roll-out.There is always so much to catch up on. This backlog is visible to all.

And then there is another kind of invisible backlog that is waiting for "once I am free from the current chaos". The work on version of themselves they meant to become by now.

In most of the cases, the timeline was not handed to them. They built it themselves - a private, moving target benchmarked against an imagined future self or a self-created expectation of efficiency. In the constant running to catch up, many of leaders stop living in the present.

So much so that the weight of the feeling of behind, is heavier than actual effort of catching up.

Behind is not only a fact about the calendar. It is a story about the self - recited until it sounds like data. The people who overcome this weight aren't the ones who catch up. They're the ones who stop believing catching up was ever the point.