Everyone understands financial debt. Borrow today, pay it back later with interest. Leadership works in the same way.
Every difficult conversation you postpone, every under-performer you give one more chance, every decision you delay because “now isn’t the right time”, you borrow from the future.
It feels sensible in the moment. It will be an emotional conversation and I haven’t got the capacity. Plus the new launch is next week or the board meeting is around the corner, things are busy. Better to deal with it later when I have more time.
👋 Hi I'm Mr Joe Leech, Trusted Advisor to CEOs, you might know me from my background in behavioural psychology.,
The problem is that later arrives with interest. Leadership debt compounds.
One delayed decision becomes weeks of uncertainty, weeks of uncertainty become conflicting priorities and conflicting priorities become wasted effort.
The problem grows and you’d wish you’d dealt with it earlier.
I rarely meet CEOs who don’t know what needs to be done, something stops them and they get used to carrying the debt. The challenge with leadership debt is that the organisation starts servicing the interest for you.
People create workarounds for leadership debt. Meetings appear to compensate for unclear decisions. Extra reporting emerges because trust has faded. Good people carry the load that somebody else should have been carrying.
The business still functions, but it becomes heavier every month. Eventually the CEO starts asking why everything feels harder than it should.
Years of small avoided decisions have accumulated into a system that now requires far more effort than it should to run.
The best CEOs I’ve worked with have one habit in common. They don’t borrow from their future.They make decisions while they’re still small. They deal with performance before it becomes cultural. They tell people the truth while relationships are still strong enough to hear it. They protect tomorrow’s organisation, even when it makes today slightly more uncomfortable.
Leadership debt never disappears by itself. Someone always pays. The only question is whether you choose to pay a little today, or ask the whole organisation to pay much more tomorrow.
PS: If this has resonated with you, please do reply or send this email on to someone else PPS: proudly containing typos, no AI was used in the writing of this email.
