How Adaptive increased Leadership Productivity while reducing burnout risk

The Challenge

Adaptive was a fast-growing technology and services business with around 200 employees across London, New York, Barcelona, Montreal and Manila.

Following the loss of a founder to burnout, the leadership team wanted to understand whether the pressures of rapid growth were creating similar risks elsewhere — and whether its most senior people could continue performing sustainably during periods of intense demand.

Seven members of the global leadership team took part, including the CEO, COO, Finance Director, Sales Director, Head of Strategy, Regional Head and HR Director.

The issue was not an obvious lack of capability.

The team was already highly motivated and high performing.

But there was a shared recognition that they could be more productive if they were able to sustain their cognitive performance more consistently — while also having more capacity for life outside work.

Looking Beyond Visible Performance

Senior leaders are usually measured by outcomes.

Revenue. Growth. Delivery. Strategy.

But those measures say little about the human-performance factors that make sustained leadership possible.

OwnLife’s Leadership & ExCo approach gave the team an objective view of the factors influencing how consistently they were able to think, decide, lead and perform.

The data surfaced some unexpected influences on performance, while the coaching helped individuals understand where targeted changes could have the greatest impact.

The Results

The impact was significant despite starting with an already high-performing leadership group.

Some individuals recroded productivity improvements of more than 20%.

Burnout indicators reduced dramatically.

More than two-thirds of the leadership team described the experience as deeply transformational, while every participant said they would advocate it to colleagues.

The team also reported improvements of more than 10% across areas directly associated with leadership performance, including:

• Leadership

• Decision making

• Deep and creative thinking

• Relationship management

• Engagement

"I am much more conscious of my form and what I need to do to sustain it. I have really felt the benefit and have been sailing through tasks I would normally put off or deliberate on." Matt Barrett - CEO

Improving Performance Without Disrupting Performance

Importantly, this happened during an exceptionally demanding period for the organisation.

The work was designed to fit alongside busy leadership roles with little or no disruption to workload.

That matters.

Improving human performance should not require leaders to step away from the business. It should help them perform more effectively within the reality of the roles they already have.

For Adaptive, the result was a leadership team with greater insight into its own performance, improved personal productivity and materially reduced burnout indicators.