October 2026

If you’re finding yourself exhausted at the end of each day — mentally depleted, unable to do much more than scroll or stare at Netflix — you’re not alone. 

Heavy AI users are increasingly suffering from a phenomenon researchers are calling “brain fry” — as one CEO put it, it’s not from work itself, but from managing all the work his AI tools are doing on his behalf. “It’s not burnout in the traditional sense. It’s something weirder — a kind of cognitive overload masked as productivity,” he explains. 

I admit I’ve felt this myself. I’ve always made an effort to delegate my busywork, taking care to focus only on the tasks I find intrinsically valuable. But lately, I’ve also seen how easy it can be to fall into a productivity trap — greater efficiency allows us to take on more projects, dividing our attention like never before. 

All this multitasking is taking its toll. But the solution isn’t necessarily to scale back on AI tools, but think strategically about how it can genuinely lighten your load versus pile on your overworked brain. Here’s how. 

The limits of efficiency 

One of the things I love about AI is how it has democratized startups. As a bootstrapped solopreneur, I’ve never believed a great idea needs VC money to turn into a viable business. This has never been truer than it is today. Even non-programmers can get a startup off the ground on their own, no coding background required. 

Not only can generative AI serve as an early support team, but it also streamlines cumbersome tasks that take huge amounts of time. Drafting a contract used to mean either paying a lawyer or spending a weekend wrestling with templates. Now it takes minutes. The same goes for writing marketing copy, summarizing a stack of customer feedback or putting together a pitch deck. The barrier to entry has been dramatically lowered, and that’s a good thing. 

The problem is how we spend our newly unlocked time. I’m all for productivity — I hate busywork so much that I wrote an entire book about how to automate it. AI agents in particular have dramatically changed the landscape, working autonomously to complete the routine tasks that once took up hours of our days. The results have been incredible — I now have systems built to simplify all of my most tedious tasks, leaving me the freedom to focus on other things. 

But researchers from BCG and the University of California have identified a new problem. AI agents are not perfect, and they need oversight to verify they’re staying on track. They’re calling the cognitive cost to overseeing so many agents “brain fry,” which they define as “mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity.” 

I get it. Plenty of companies are pressuring their employees to become tireless AI taskmasters, even tying performance metrics to how many lines of code are AI-generated. But the problem isn’t AI itself — it’s how it’s being deployed. And it’s up to leaders to ensure that teams are using it to their advantage, giving them more mental space, not less.

How leaders can help

At my company, Jotform, we’ve proudly embraced the AI revolution. Online forms are well-suited to benefit from AI’s abilities, and we’ve released a number of products (such as AI App Builder) designed to make our customers’ lives easier. And our teams use them too — which, in my opinion, is the best way to know that they work. 

Even so, we established a set of best practices for AI use early on, which I think has helped keep brain fry at bay. Here’s how we’re approaching it.  

Don’t outsource your deep work

One thing we’ve been deliberate about is not letting AI do our thinking for us. While it’s important for teams to experiment with new tools, human creativity should always remain at the forefront. Generative AI can absolutely serve as a collaborator and sounding board, but at the end of the day, there needs to be a person steering the ship. 

To me, AI’s most important role is eliminating busywork. For us, that means using AI for tasks like taming an unruly inbox, summarizing meeting notes and acting as a thought partner when brainstorming new ideas. It doesn’t mean outsourcing our thinking or creativity.

The researchers found that when limited to this purpose, the problem of brain fry is kept at bay. 

Establish ground rules and guardrails

When it comes to their AI use, your employees should not feel like they’re in the Wild West. Leaders should codify best practices and make sure every employee understands when to use AI tools and how. 

Clear directives on AI not only keep your company and its data safe, it keeps employees from feeling overwhelmed and confused. At Jotform, we make sure AI use is transparent, and that everyone understands which tasks are off-limits to it entirely. 

Don’t expect productivity to infinitely scale

I am, and always will be, a big believer in the power of rest. Many of my best ideas and breakthroughs have come to me not while I’m poring over my laptop, but amid the olive groves on my family’s farm in Turkey. 

Brain fry is a symptom of the mental drain of overseeing too many agents, and that’s a problem: AI is making it possible to do more with less, but those gains are not infinite. People need rest, and the best leaders know this. Protect your teams’ downtime, and make sure they understand your expectations of their output. 

Burnout thrives in ambiguity. By all means, encourage your teams to use AI. But make your expectations clear, your processes transparent and your boundaries firm. 

If you’re finding yourself exhausted at the end of each day — mentally depleted, unable to do much more than scroll or stare at Netflix — you’re not alone. 

Heavy AI users are increasingly suffering from a phenomenon researchers are calling “brain fry” — as one CEO put it, it’s not from work itself, but from managing all the work his AI tools are doing on his behalf. “It’s not burnout in the traditional sense. It’s something weirder — a kind of cognitive overload masked as productivity,” he explains. 

I admit I’ve felt this myself. I’ve always made an effort to delegate my busywork, taking care to focus only on the tasks I find intrinsically valuable. But lately, I’ve also seen how easy it can be to fall into a productivity trap — greater efficiency allows us to take on more projects, dividing our attention like never before. 

One of the decisions that can determine whether a growing company scales smoothly or starts to strain has little to do with the product, the pitch or the funding round. It comes down to something far less exciting: Do you build the operational backbone of your business before you urgently need it, or do you wait until the cracks start to show and scramble to fix it?

After more than 32 years in this industry, I have seen plenty of companies wait. The problem is that waiting can make the eventual fix more complicated and expensive.

I am talking about the machinery that keeps a workforce running: payroll, benefits, compliance, hiring systems and the paperwork nobody dreams about when they start a company. Early on, a founder may be able to manage much of it personally, sometimes with little more than basic software and a spreadsheet. With a small team, you may know everyone’s name and understand every line of payroll. Then growth arrives, and the setup that worked for a handful of employees may no longer be enough.

The decision no one puts on the whiteboard

Founders naturally spend a lot of time planning for growth. They map out the product roadmap, sales targets, hiring needs and the next market to enter. What can get less attention is the point at which managing a growing workforce requires more formal systems and expertise.

That point can arrive quickly. One day, you are approving time off via text or in a group chat. Later, you may have employees working in multiple states, each with potentially different registration, payroll tax, unemployment insurance, leave, wage-and-hour and other employment requirements.

Managing people does not scale on goodwill alone. It needs structure, and companies have a choice about when to put that structure in place, which can help founders feel more confident in their growth plans.

Recognizing that early infrastructure investments enable smooth scaling can help founders feel more confident in their growth plans, knowing they are proactively supporting their company’s future.

Why smart founders wait too long

Sharp, capable people can delay this for reasons that feel completely rational in the moment.

The first is cost. Building infrastructure means spending money today for problems that may not be urgent yet, but delaying can lead to costly fixes later, risking your control over expenses and growth.

The same willingness to do everything yourself that can help a company survive its earliest days can become difficult to sustain as the business grows. Delegating payroll and benefits responsibilities may feel like giving up control, but establishing trusted systems and hiring experienced professionals can help founders maintain oversight as they scale confidently.

The third is visibility. Problems in sales or cash flow tend to demand immediate attention. Weaknesses in HR administration or compliance can be easy to overlook until they lead to a missed deadline, an incorrect filing, an employee issue, or another costly problem.

By that point, you may no longer be making a deliberate decision about infrastructure. You are solving an urgent problem.

What building the backbone early looks like

Building early does not mean overbuilding. You are not creating a hundred-person HR department for a team of 20. You are putting the load-bearing pieces in place before the organization puts more weight on them.

That can mean reliable payroll systems and processes that can accommodate employees in multiple jurisdictions. It can mean developing a competitive benefits program, since benefits can play an important role in recruiting and retaining employees. It means having access to people or systems that can help track applicable employment requirements as the company expands into new jurisdictions. And it means creating a hiring and onboarding process that managers can follow consistently without the founder having to oversee every step.

You also have choices in how you get there. You can hire an operations or HR leader when the workload and complexity justify it. You can outsource specific functions such as payroll or benefits administration. Or you can work with a professional employer organization, or PEO, which can take on certain payroll, benefits, HR administration and employment-related responsibilities under the terms of its agreement with the client.

Addressing those needs deliberately can help founders feel more prepared and in control, rather than reactive, and provide reassurance about managing growth effectively.

The price of bolting it on later

I have watched strong companies lose time and momentum because their growth outpaced the systems supporting their workforce.

Payroll tax mistakes or missed deposits can result in penalties and additional costs, including fines and legal issues. Expanding into another state without proper registration can lead to costly legal penalties, highlighting the risks of delaying infrastructure investments.

Not every mistake becomes a crisis, and the consequences vary considerably depending on the circumstances. But correcting payroll, benefits, HR and compliance problems after they have accumulated is rarely where a growing company’s leadership wants to spend its time or resources.

Eventually, growth exposes what the business failed to build along the way, so early planning can help founders avoid unexpected operational challenges and feel more at ease with their expansion process.

How to know you are ready

There is no universal employee count at which a company suddenly needs a more sophisticated HR or operational structure. Instead, look for signs such as increased management time spent on onboarding, multi-state employment or compliance issues to determine when to act.

Maybe you are still approving routine decisions that someone else could handle. You have started employing people in multiple states. Hiring and onboarding new employees are consuming more management time. Payroll, benefits or compliance questions increasingly require expertise you do not have internally. Or you have already had a close call with a filing deadline or an employment requirement you did not know applied to your business.

Those are signs that the systems supporting your workforce deserve a closer look.

The goal is not to build bureaucracy for its own sake. It is to put enough structure in place that adding employees, entering new markets, or accelerating growth does not create unnecessary operational risk.

Scaling is not only about going faster. It is about building a company capable of handling the additional speed. Make the unglamorous decisions early, and the systems nobody talks about may become some of the most important ones you build.

One of the decisions that can determine whether a growing company scales smoothly or starts to strain has little to do with the product, the pitch or the funding round. It comes down to something far less exciting: Do you build the operational backbone of your business before you urgently need it, or do you wait until the cracks start to show and scramble to fix it?

After more than 32 years in this industry, I have seen plenty of companies wait. The problem is that waiting can make the eventual fix more complicated and expensive.

I am talking about the machinery that keeps a workforce running: payroll, benefits, compliance, hiring systems and the paperwork nobody dreams about when they start a company. Early on, a founder may be able to manage much of it personally, sometimes with little more than basic software and a spreadsheet. With a small team, you may know everyone’s name and understand every line of payroll. Then growth arrives, and the setup that worked for a handful of employees may no longer be enough.

The rise of AI is making younger and older workers alike increasingly uneasy. Nearly every conversation I have, especially with young professionals, seems to center on the same worry: Will AI replace them, take their jobs and rob them of a livelihood? 

Fortunately, the answer is no, as long as they master the new super-skill: persuasion. By mastering this skill, they can not only avoid displacement — they can quickly climb the career ladder and thrive professionally and personally by learning to sell themselves and their ideas with maximal effectiveness. 

After all, persuasion — rightly understood as “shared action” — is a uniquely human skill that can never be replaced by AI. 

The growing threat of AI — and the skill that can set you apart

Blue- and white-collar professionals alike face the challenging reality that more and more tasks can be automated. A November 2025 report from McKinsey found that 57% of U.S. work hours are technically automatable today. Boston Consulting Group estimated earlier this year that 50-55% of jobs will be reshaped by AI in the next two to three years, and 12% could be substituted. 

AI is already well-positioned to take over many routine, digital and text-heavy tasks. Tasks such as:

Writing: AI can generate coherent texts, including books (an issue at the heart of a growing number of publishing controversies), op-eds and even email. Gmail suggested a surprisingly good response to a query I just received from my boss.

Kids are even growing up using AI to write. A RAND report revealed that 62% of middle school, high school and college students admit to using AI for homework in December 2025, up from 48% in May 2025. 

Data collection, entry, processing and basic analysis, which is why there has been a sharp decline in job postings for these skills since 2021. 

Basic research, including finding and summarizing documents, comparing, checking and analyzing information, and even drafting reports. 

These trends are especially concerning for entry-level or junior knowledge work jobs. At a recent working group meeting on the future of work, one colleague said his organization was now hiring only two research assistants who know how to use AI when it used to hire five. Three jobs, effectively gone. 

The best way for professionals to ensure they can thrive is to master skills that will set them apart regardless of how AI and its impact on the economy and workforce evolve. No skill will be more important than the ability to persuade. 

Persuasion is the difference between having a good idea and having others embrace it. AI can never get others to embrace ideas. Only persuasive humans can. 

Persuasion is foundational to every field, from leadership to sales to engineering.

3 specific persuasion skills are now paramount

First, learn to navigate situations with maximal emotional intelligence. Since AI can already provide more data than you’ll ever need to make your case, focus on ensuring your audience experiences the data the way you need to persuade them. 

That starts with considering how you expect your audience to receive the information you share — positively, negatively or neutrally? Make sure you see things from their perspective and prepare, rather than insisting they see things your way.

If the response is likely to be negative, navigate their emotions with empathy. Acknowledge that they’re likely to have a negative response. You can’t defuse negative emotions by ignoring them.

Suppose you’re presenting to management about last quarter’s bad results. Say something like, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I have some difficult news to share. It’s going to be stressful and disappointing. Last quarter was rough for us.”

What emotions are persuasive? Although we’re awash in negativity these days, in part because we’re wired with “negativity bias,” negativity isn’t persuasive, especially not in the long term. Positive emotions drive shared action far more durably. 

Doubtful? Three of the most iconic and impactful figures in the 20th Century — John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan — were overwhelmingly positive. That’s one reason we remember them so fondly today.

To generate positive emotions, focus on the good things, as well as the big-picture values and ideas you’re for, that resonate with your audience. If you have a vision for making things better, share it. 

After sharing the bad news with the board, pivot to your plan for turning things around, how you’re executing it and how it’ll leave the organization in a much better place. 

Second, become a phenomenal storyteller, because storytelling is hands-down the most persuasive tool around. Humans are first and foremost story-processors. And people remember stories way better than data. One study found people could recall stories more than twice as much as statistical information. 

Storytellers are in high demand. An article in The Wall Street Journal explained that companies are “desperately” seeking people to fill “storyteller” positions. One company was looking for a “Head of Storytelling” with a salary going up to $274,000. 

What makes a story persuasive? It has to generate persuasive emotions in the audience that impel them to act. Appealing to their values is a particularly effective way to do this. 

Third, strengthen your ability to go beyond words and master things like tone and body language. These often tell a much different story from someone’s words, because the latter are much easier to select than the former, which occur naturally in response to situations. AI won’t be there to pick up on these things for you. 

Notice when someone’s tone sounds excited, stressed or irritated. Ensure your tone is appealing. The best tone to adopt is a calm one. 

Be mindful of their body language. When you make an offer, watch their face. Do they wince? Or do they look genuinely excited? 

On your side, adopt persuasive body language. Hand steepling is one simple way to demonstrate confidence. 

When you layer these skills on top of the information AI provides, you will crash through your glass ceiling and reach new professional and personal heights. 

The rise of AI is making younger and older workers alike increasingly uneasy. Nearly every conversation I have, especially with young professionals, seems to center on the same worry: Will AI replace them, take their jobs and rob them of a livelihood? 

Fortunately, the answer is no, as long as they master the new super-skill: persuasion. By mastering this skill, they can not only avoid displacement — they can quickly climb the career ladder and thrive professionally and personally by learning to sell themselves and their ideas with maximal effectiveness. 

After all, persuasion — rightly understood as “shared action” — is a uniquely human skill that can never be replaced by AI. 

A large company had missed the same cross-functional launch commitment more than once. A business unit was preparing to release a new service, but a technology dependency had slipped after operations had already built its launch sequence around the original date.

After the latest miss, leadership sharpened accountability.

One senior business leader would own the commitment from end to end and answer for it in the monthly milestone review. The ownership question was settled. Everyone knew who carried the result.

The problem sat earlier in the work.

During planning, operations and technology had agreed on the sequencing around a shared dependency. At that point, the launch date was still movable, the scope could still be adjusted, and the order of work could still change.

The senior owner wasn’t part of that planning exchange, and the role entered the flow once the milestone review arrived, after both teams had already organized their work around the commitment.

By then, the owner could push recovery, reset expectations and bring leaders together. The owner couldn’t recreate the room to change the original sequence before other teams had built around it.

Sharper ownership solves the wrong part of the failure

Accountability helps when people don’t know who owns the result. That wasn’t the issue here. Leadership had already named the owner, and the owner understood the responsibility.

The repeat miss began when the commitment crossed from one team to the next. Operations planned around a technology dependency, technology planned around its own delivery sequence, and the senior owner entered only when the combined milestone came up for review.

This is where broken handoffs showed up in the work.

The handoff still moved through the same sequence even though the accountability above it had become sharper.

A review that starts from the missed commitment identifies who answers for the result. It can’t recover the earlier planning point when the owner still had room to change the sequence, narrow the scope or reset the date before downstream work was committed.

That leaves leadership with a reasonable response. The miss has reached the milestone review, one person owns it, and stronger accountability looks like the most direct way to prevent a repeat.

The cost builds through recovery work

When the launch commitment slips, operations has already arranged downstream work around the expected date. Teams have prepared customer communications, training activity and operational readiness based on a sequence that now has to change.

Technology feels the same disruption from the other side. Specialists who were working against the agreed dependency are pulled into recovery meetings to explain what moved, what can still be delivered and what now has to be re-sequenced.

People who thought a decision was behind them have to reopen it because the missed handoff has changed the work around it.

Customer-facing teams pay another cost. Communications that had been prepared for the original date have to be held or rewritten, managers have to explain why training and readiness activity has shifted, and people who weren’t part of the original dependency discussion still have to absorb the consequences of it.

The missed commitment also changes what senior leaders spend their time discussing. Instead of using the milestone review to make decisions about the next stage of the launch, they use part of it to reconstruct how the current miss happened and decide what can still be protected.

The review becomes a recovery forum after the choices with the greatest room to move have already passed.

The senior owner spends time coordinating that recovery across functions. Milestone meetings get longer because the agenda now includes both the current work and the work that has to be repaired. Other leaders are pulled in because the missed launch commitment affects plans outside the immediate teams.

The credibility cost grows as well. The named owner was supposed to make the next cycle more dependable. When the same kind of miss returns, teams start to question whether the accountability change altered the work or simply changed who had to explain it afterward.

Recovery now consumes management time across operations, technology and the business while the organization still has to protect the next launch commitment. That is capacity being spent repairing a sequence that had already hardened before the owner became central to the work.

Accountability gets sharper while the work reaches the owner at the same point

The next launch cycle introduced a different dependency inside the same program. This time, operations needed a data migration step completed before customer training could begin.

During planning, operations and technology agreed on the timing between migration, training and launch readiness, but the senior business owner again wasn’t part of that exchange. The dates looked workable when the teams set them.

Operations scheduled training around the migration date, technology planned the migration around its own delivery sequence, and both teams carried the commitment into the next milestone review.

By the time that review arrived, the migration date had moved, and training was already arranged around the original sequence. The senior owner was fully accountable for the launch result, but the useful choices had narrowed to recovery.

The choices now were to move training, compress preparation or reset the launch date.

The repeat miss produced a familiar leadership response. The owner received firmer expectations, milestone reviews became more demanding, and the commitment received more senior attention.

Each step made sense because the organization now had a named owner, another miss and pressure to show the issue was being taken seriously.

The timing of the owner’s involvement hadn’t changed. Operations and technology still made the sequencing commitment during planning, and the senior owner still became central at the milestone review after other teams had already organized around the dependency.

More pressure on the owner left that timing untouched and made the same accountability response more forceful.

That’s where accountability becomes “theater.”

The organization can point to a stronger owner, tougher reviews and firmer consequences while the part of the work that shaped the miss still reaches that owner after the choices have narrowed.

The persistence comes from the response itself. A missed commitment produces sharper accountability, sharper accountability increases pressure on the same role, and the next cycle still brings that role into the work at the same late point.

Accountability looks strongest at the moment everyone knows who owns the result.

The harder question is where that owner sits while the work is still movable.

A large company had missed the same cross-functional launch commitment more than once. A business unit was preparing to release a new service, but a technology dependency had slipped after operations had already built its launch sequence around the original date.

After the latest miss, leadership sharpened accountability.

One senior business leader would own the commitment from end to end and answer for it in the monthly milestone review. The ownership question was settled. Everyone knew who carried the result.

An online grocery order needs filling. A shopper in the aisle needs help finding something.

For a Walmart associate, the job can mean moving between those demands. It requires locating products, packing purchases and getting orders to customers, all while answering questions on the sales floor. That is the work Walmart describes in its own recruiting materials. The company warns that the pace can become intense on evenings, weekends and holidays. 

Walmart’s associates don’t stay in those positions for long. According to a new Business Insider report, Walmart promotes about 500 employees every day. Staff members have ample opportunities to climb the corporate ladder and advance at the company. 

Walmart employs about 2.1 million people worldwide, including about 1.6 million in the U.S. and 500,000 internationally, according to its fiscal 2026 annual report. Those figures are valid as of January 31. 

Walmart’s chief people officer, Donna Morris, said in an interview with Business Insider that employees who advance through the ranks quickly happen to share two qualities. 

She said standing out first starts with doing their current job well. The employees who get noticed put their energy into delivering strong work and making meaningful contributions. 

“They are focused as much, if not more, on being exceptional at what they’re doing today,” Morris told Business Insider.

After mastering their current role, these employees look for ways to show that they are ready for a bigger challenge. Taking on higher-level work, suggesting improvements and volunteering for new projects can demonstrate readiness for a higher position before a promotion arrives, Morris said. 

“Be the person that asks or provides volunteerism for new ideas or new initiatives,” Morris said.

How much Walmart pays employees

According to Walmart’s corporate website, the company’s U.S. associates receive their first promotion in nine months, on average.

Walmart noted on its website that its average U.S. hourly employee earns more than $18.50 an hour. That figure is an average across workers, not a guaranteed offer to a new hire. The company lists a broad hourly range of $14 to $37 for team-associate roles, with pay varying by position and region. Supply-chain employees earn an average of $27.50 an hour, according to Walmart.

“Approximately 75% of our U.S. salaried store, club, and supply-chain management started their careers in hourly positions,” Walmart disclosed. “Associates in these roles earned an average of more than $123,000 in FY2025.”

The company also wrote that over the past decade, over 115 former Walmart employees have advanced to become CEOs at other firms. 

“People gain exceptional experience and transferable skills by leading here,” Walmart claimed. 

What does it take to get a foot in the door at Walmart? Morris told Business Insider that she looks for evidence that candidates have worked through challenges rather than giving up. 

“Be the type of person that takes on over and above what’s being expected of you,” Morris said.

An online grocery order needs filling. A shopper in the aisle needs help finding something.

For a Walmart associate, the job can mean moving between those demands. It requires locating products, packing purchases and getting orders to customers, all while answering questions on the sales floor. That is the work Walmart describes in its own recruiting materials. The company warns that the pace can become intense on evenings, weekends and holidays. 

Walmart’s associates don’t stay in those positions for long. According to a new Business Insider report, Walmart promotes about 500 employees every day. Staff members have ample opportunities to climb the corporate ladder and advance at the company. 

Confidence is running well ahead of readiness in the executive ranks — just not in the way most leaders assume. A Careerminds study published in August found that while 98% of people managers and 97% of HR professionals believe managers are prepared to lead through what’s ahead, fewer than half of managers feel highly prepared across the specific challenges now defining the job.

That overconfidence gets worse the higher up you look. Executives consistently rate managers as more ready and better supported than managers rate themselves, with 66% of C-suite respondents calling managers very ready against just 42% of those closer to the front line.

That gap has a name, and it shows up earliest for leaders who were promoted for their expertise. The instincts that made someone the best engineer, the sharpest analyst or the most reliable operator in the room are individual-contributor strengths. At the enterprise level, those same instincts are no longer compatible with teamwork.

Having coached executives across industries, I’ve watched that same gap open in almost identical ways, and it never announces itself as a crisis. It shows up first as a small, specific moment. Recognizing it is the difference between leaders who make the transition and leaders who stall inside it. Here’s what that moment looks like, and what to build once it arrives:

1. Catch the tell before it becomes a habit

Moving from managing a team to leading leaders is a change in both scope and attitude. Kristin Whitley-Smith, president of Mooring USA, a nationally recognized provider of best-in-class commercial construction and disaster restoration solutions, described it this way: “As CFO, my value was in having the answer — the number, the analysis, the recommendation — ready before anyone asked. As president, I noticed people were still waiting for me to just hand them the answer, and I realized that if I kept doing that, I was crowding out the people I needed to develop and rely on. The shift was learning to sit on my hands, ask what my team thought we should do and let them own the outcome, even when it took longer or looked different than what I would have done.”

That’s the clearest early signal it’s time to reconsider old habits. Results now depend on how well other experienced professionals do their jobs, not on what one person can personally deliver — and the instinct to jump in and fix something in a meeting, because the technical background makes it easy, is a reflex from a job you no longer have.

There’s a related reflex, and it’s easier to miss. It shows up not when you volunteer an answer, but when someone else asks you for one. Elsbeth Johnson, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan, found that the real block usually isn’t a skills gap. It’s an inability to say “no.” Leaders keep absorbing requests for help because turning them down feels like a failure to be useful, according to her research in Harvard Business Review.

Both reflexes only change once they’re noticed. Track how often you supply the answer before anyone asks and how often you say yes to requests that aren’t yours to carry anymore. Build the opposite habit deliberately. Ask what someone thinks before offering a view, then let the decision play out within clear guardrails instead of correcting it in real time. The ratio says more about readiness for the next level than any review ever will.

2. Redefine what “valuable” means before the transition stalls

The measure of a leader at this level is how well the organization performs without them in the room, and leaders who don’t redefine “valuable” around that standard tend to struggle. McKinsey research has found that one-third to one-half of new CEOs are considered to be failing within 18 months of taking the role, and more than 90% of them later admit they wish they’d managed the transition differently.

Author Liz Wiseman’s research offers an explanation for that gap. She calls the two types of leaders Multipliers and Diminishers. Diminishers drain intelligence and capability from the people around them by insisting on being the smartest person in the room; Multipliers extract more capability from the people they lead than they contribute themselves, not by directing the work personally, but by coaching the people responsible for it and treating a mistake as a data point instead of a failure to correct. Her research across 150 executives in 35 countries found that Multipliers effectively double the available intelligence and output of their team compared to Diminishers.

That’s the standard “valuable” needs to move toward. In practice, it starts with something concrete. Define three to five outcomes that actually matter for a given initiative, such as revenue, retention, a launch date or a quality bar. Everything underneath those outcomes stops being where your value lives. Measure yourself by how completely the team hits them without you, not by how much of the thinking behind them was yours.

3. Set the conditions, then get out of the way

Microsoft’s cultural shift under Satya Nadella remains the clearest example of this posture put into practice. Jeffrey Snover, Microsoft’s CTO from 2019 to 2022, recalled in an account reported by Entrepreneur that Nadella told a room of senior executives to manufacture success with the resources they already had rather than ask for more, and to be bold even though they might fail. The only real requirement, Nadella said, was intellectual honesty: having a clear theory of success, allocating resources against it and adjusting as new information came in.

That is the system-shaping posture in a single meeting. Set the standard and the conditions, then let people own what happens next. Give a team the outcome and the constraints, then step back far enough to let them fail small before they succeed big.

A different way to measure yourself

The identity built on having the answer does not disappear the moment a title changes — it has to be deliberately replaced. Leaders who make that trade build organizations that function well without them in the room, which is the only measure of leadership that actually scales.

The next time the instinct to jump in and fix something shows up in a meeting, treat it as information instead of a habit to indulge. That moment, more than any title change, is where the real promotion happens.

Confidence is running well ahead of readiness in the executive ranks — just not in the way most leaders assume. A Careerminds study published in August found that while 98% of people managers and 97% of HR professionals believe managers are prepared to lead through what’s ahead, fewer than half of managers feel highly prepared across the specific challenges now defining the job.

That overconfidence gets worse the higher up you look. Executives consistently rate managers as more ready and better supported than managers rate themselves, with 66% of C-suite respondents calling managers very ready against just 42% of those closer to the front line.

That gap has a name, and it shows up earliest for leaders who were promoted for their expertise. The instincts that made someone the best engineer, the sharpest analyst or the most reliable operator in the room are individual-contributor strengths. At the enterprise level, those same instincts are no longer compatible with teamwork.

Last year, an executive at a tech company asked me whether I could keynote their employee resource group event. I knew there were speakers out there who were better aligned with their women’s program, so I kindly passed on the opportunity and sent several other names instead. I’m an ally, but I was also the wrong person for that stage. Their audience deserved someone who could speak from lived experience.

I’ve delivered hundreds of keynotes, workshops and retreats on workplace mental health, burnout and boundaries, communication and conflict for organizations like Amazon, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, LinkedIn and WebMD, but I still keep a running list of speakers I refer organizers to, because the right speaker serves everyone better. Disappointing sessions usually trace back to a good speaker standing in front of the wrong room.

The following six questions will help you decide what you want to actually receive for your investment in a speaker, and how to make sure you get the right one.

1. What needs to be different when people leave?

Organizers usually start their event planning process by focusing on a topic. I’d rather you start with the question of what needs to be different when people walk out of the room.

The speaker who raises the professional caliber of your conference isn’t necessarily the one who re-energizes a room after lunch. If you just want to attract registrations with a marquee name like Michelle Obama, that’s one thing, but if you want to run a workshop that gives managers practical tools for navigating employee mental health, that’s another.

Before you shortlist any particular speaker, answer these questions:

• What do you want attendees to do differently after they leave your session?
• Are you trying to inspire the room, teach it something new or change how people work?
• Is this session meant to draw registrations or serve the people who are already coming?

When I ask an organizer what success looks like to them, and the conversation goes quiet, I usually find that they’re not really ready to book a speaker.

2. What kind of speaker does this audience need?

Do you want lived experience, academic depth or someone who does the work daily? Those are three different speakers, yet organizers treat them as interchangeable.

I once spoke at a university and it turned out that the audience really wanted an academic. They had come for theory and peer-reviewed research, and I showed up as a practitioner with tools and exercises. Within 10 minutes, I could feel my presentation wasn’t what they were expecting.

The same thinking applies to diversity. I ask every organizer who else is speaking at their event, and I’ve declined invitations that would have put me on an all-white, all-male panel. I believe that your speakers should reflect the audience in front of them.

3. What does your speaking fee cover?

Speaking fees generally range from a modest honorarium to well into six figures. What that covers is rarely obvious from the outside, but it’s customary to include the calls before the event, the design work that turns those calls into a real session, the day itself and the debrief afterward. I also consider travel days to be working days, particularly for a multi-day offsite or leadership retreat.

Your speaker’s reputation is part of how your event gets marketed, too. Attendees have told me they registered for a conference because they saw my name on the agenda. Professional development budgets are tight, and HR leaders who can attend one conference a year regularly choose based on the speaker roster.

Still, organizers tend to lean too heavily on public visibility when choosing a speaker. A large social media following only tells you someone can market themselves, which is a very different skill than holding a room’s attention for 90 minutes. A bestselling book only tells you they can write. Neither tells you how a speaker handles questions they don’t see coming.

4. How much of this session gets built for us?

I once sat in the audience at an industry conference and recognized that the keynote was giving the exact same speech they’d given at another event I’d attended. In fact, someone I knew leaned over partway through to mention that fact to me.

To avoid stale or irrelevant material, ask what the speaker’s customization process actually involves. Dropping your logo onto a deck isn’t the same as targeting their content. They need to understand what you actually want. I once designed a conflict inventory workshop for the people team at an enterprise software company then realized in the prep call that they didn’t even want me to do conflict training. Rather, they wanted to me to equip them to deliver the training themselves. Understanding that in advance helped me reshape the entire build, from the exercises down to the facilitator notes.

5. How do you adapt when a session isn’t landing?

Another time, I was mid-session in a workshop on boundaries and self-care, about to launch into a delegation activity, when audience feedback revealed they didn’t know how to prioritize. You can’t hand work off until you know which work matters most, so how were they supposed to delegate?

So we stopped. I set the slides aside, picked up a flip chart and markers and built a prioritization exercise on the spot. We returned to delegation afterward, and it landed because we’d cleared the roadblock.

Plenty of speakers just keep clicking through their deck regardless of what’s happening in the room. While that can work for a large keynote audience, managers and executives in a training session can tell when a facilitator is just delivering a script and not addressing their needs.

It’s hard to know in advance whether a prospective speaker can adapt on the fly, which is why it’s important to go beyond the one-sheet and check references and try to watch a full-length video of their past presentations.

6. How far out is your calendar booked?

Strong speakers fill their calendars a year out, so booking late narrows your options to whoever happens to be available. Try to start looking for speakers as far ahead of time as possible. This allows you to get good prices on travel and engage in planning calls to help the expert tailor their content to your needs.

Of course, you don’t always have enough time to plan ahead, but you can still make a better decision by working closely with the speaker on their content. I once accepted a booking with under two weeks of lead time, but it went well because we were honest about what was possible.

If you’re up against a tight timeline, you might also consider hosting a virtual session, which opens up your options, though I’d press hard on whether that speaker can truly engage people remotely. Otherwise, your attendees will experience your event as just one more meeting on their calendar.

Final thoughts on hiring a professional speaker

The organizers I most respect approach this process as if they were making a hiring decision. They talk with several prospects before choosing one. They call references. They ask what the post-event survey data from the person’s last speech actually said rather than relying on testimonials. When they approach it this way, some conclude they don’t need an outside speaker at all, which can be the right answer.

When you address the questions above before you sign anything, you’ll walk into your event knowing exactly who and what you booked. That way, your audience will have a productive and engaging experience. Remember, you’ve got this!

Last year, an executive at a tech company asked me whether I could keynote their employee resource group event. I knew there were speakers out there who were better aligned with their women’s program, so I kindly passed on the opportunity and sent several other names instead. I’m an ally, but I was also the wrong person for that stage. Their audience deserved someone who could speak from lived experience.

I’ve delivered hundreds of keynotes, workshops and retreats on workplace mental health, burnout and boundaries, communication and conflict for organizations like Amazon, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, LinkedIn and WebMD, but I still keep a running list of speakers I refer organizers to, because the right speaker serves everyone better. Disappointing sessions usually trace back to a good speaker standing in front of the wrong room.

The following six questions will help you decide what you want to actually receive for your investment in a speaker, and how to make sure you get the right one.

Several years ago, I worked with a company that had become trapped by one employee.

She was exceptionally good at a handful of critical responsibilities. She knew the systems, the customers and the history of the organization. Leadership viewed her as indispensable. Whenever concerns about her behavior surfaced, the conversation ended in the same place: They could not afford to lose her. The problem was that nobody wanted to work with her.

New employees joined the team and left within months. Managers spent significant time mediating conflict. Colleagues avoided interacting with her whenever possible. The organization kept absorbing the disruption because she handled a few functions that nobody else understood.

Instead of addressing the issue directly, the company started hiring around it. They brought in support staff. They shifted responsibilities. They created new positions designed to reduce friction. When one solution failed, they tried another. Every new hire was supposed to relieve pressure, yet the pressure never disappeared. At some point, leadership found itself asking a question many business owners eventually confront: Why do we keep adding people without making progress?

The answer had been sitting in front of them the entire time. They did not have a staffing problem. They had an accountability problem. Before you post the job, you need to know whether you are facing a people problem, a systems problem or a leadership problem.

Diagnose the real problem first

One reason business owners make poor hiring decisions is that they treat hiring as the first step in solving a problem instead of the last. When a team feels overwhelmed, the natural reaction is to add capacity. Stress is real, but stress is not a metric. Before adding headcount, leaders need objective evidence that demand has exceeded the team’s ability to deliver.

In my own business, we rely heavily on capacity planning and operational metrics. We track workload, pipeline activity, client growth and billable hours. Those measurements help us determine whether demand truly exceeds capacity or whether another solution would create a better outcome. Without that kind of data, hiring decisions become emotional. A manager feels overwhelmed, so the company assumes the department needs another person. A team is busy, so leadership assumes busyness equals productivity. A few deadlines slip, so the business adds another layer without understanding why the work is falling behind.

The better question is: What number proves we need another person?

That number will look different in every business. It may be billable hours, open service tickets, sales pipeline volume, client growth, production demand or response times. The point is not which metric you use. The point is that the decision should be tied to something more reliable than a feeling. Sometimes the data will show that you need to hire. Other times, it will show that the better answer is training, process improvement, technology, clearer ownership or a better handoff between team members.

The data creates clarity. Clarity produces better decisions.

Stop hiring around unresolved problems

One of the most expensive habits I see in growing businesses is the tendency to hire around problems leadership does not want to confront. A sales leader struggles to hold people accountable, so the company hires additional support. A customer service employee creates conflict throughout the department, so management adds more people to absorb the workload. An operational process breaks down repeatedly, so leadership assigns additional staff to monitor it rather than fixing the process itself.

Over time, the organization accumulates layers of workarounds. Payroll grows. Reporting relationships become more complicated. Communication becomes more difficult. Leaders find themselves managing a larger organization without seeing meaningful improvement in performance. The original issue remains untouched.

This is one reason growth can feel surprisingly difficult. Leaders believe they are investing in solutions when they are actually financing avoidance. Before you create a new position, ask one uncomfortable question: If I add another person tomorrow, what specifically becomes easier?

If the answer is vague, hiring is probably premature. If the answer is measurable, observable and connected to a specific business objective, you are much more likely to make a smart investment.

Build the system before you hire into it

Every employee brings value. Every employee also introduces complexity. A new hire requires onboarding, training, management, communication, feedback, technology and integration into the existing team. They need clarity around expectations. They need defined responsibilities. They need to understand how their role contributes to broader business objectives. When those foundations are already in place, adding a person can accelerate growth. When those foundations are missing, the organization gains another person trying to navigate uncertainty.

Before creating a new position, leaders should take a hard look at the environment that person will enter. Can you clearly explain what success looks like in the role? Are responsibilities documented? Do employees understand who owns which outcomes? Have expectations been communicated clearly? Are performance standards being enforced consistently? Can you identify the metrics that show whether the role is succeeding?

If those questions produce uncertain answers, there is work to do before hiring.

Strong systems create leverage. Clear expectations reduce friction. Documented processes shorten learning curves. Accountability improves execution. None of those improvements requires additional headcount. Many require leadership attention.

This matters especially when a business is growing quickly. Hiring into chaos doesn’t calm the chaos. It spreads it.

Know when hiring is the right answer

There comes a point when every healthy business needs more people. Growth creates demand. Demand requires capacity. Hiring should be part of a company’s evolution. The strongest hiring decisions happen when leaders understand exactly what problem they are solving and what success will look like once the role is filled.

A business is ready to hire when the work is clearly defined, the role has a measurable purpose and the organization has the ability to train the person entering it. Hiring also makes sense when existing employees are consistently operating at capacity, the demand is tied to real business growth and process improvements alone will not solve the gap.

That is very different from hiring because everyone feels busy. Busy is a signal to investigate. It is not enough by itself to justify another salary, another manager, another onboarding process and another layer of complexity.

Before you add headcount, take the time to identify what is actually broken. The answer may lead you toward a new hire. It may lead you toward a better process, a clearer dashboard, a difficult performance conversation or a handoff that should have happened months ago.

Either way, you will make a better decision than hiring first and diagnosing later.

Several years ago, I worked with a company that had become trapped by one employee.

She was exceptionally good at a handful of critical responsibilities. She knew the systems, the customers and the history of the organization. Leadership viewed her as indispensable. Whenever concerns about her behavior surfaced, the conversation ended in the same place: They could not afford to lose her. The problem was that nobody wanted to work with her.

New employees joined the team and left within months. Managers spent significant time mediating conflict. Colleagues avoided interacting with her whenever possible. The organization kept absorbing the disruption because she handled a few functions that nobody else understood.