For every executive, pressure for delivery is a constant: investors expect results, boards demand performance, and teams look to leadership for stability and vision. This rhythm is like an unrelenting metronome that leaves little (if not at all) room for strategic reflection and organizational breathing space. Yet, leaders who aspire to create long-term value know it’s not just about running faster – sprinting every sprint – but about orchestrating moments of intensity and recovery.
What if we viewed the quarter not as an endless race, but as a sport coach would DO: a training cycle, with phases of building, planned peaks and regeneration?
The Trap of the “Permanent Sprint”
In endurance sports, no athlete trains or competes constantly in Zone 5 (maximum intensity), see my post Why Organizations Get Stuck in Zone 5 (and What It Costs Them). Doing so would burn energy, increase injury risk, and shorten their career.
Yet many organizations operate exactly this way: pushing at full speed, quarter after quarter after quarter.
Just as cognitive overload produces what we call Organizational Lactate — the silent fatigue that builds up when intensity never eases — the obsession with quarterly performance risks trapping companies in a similar spiral. Both phenomena share the same root cause: the absence of cycles of effort and recovery. For a deep dive into this concept see my previous blog post Organizational Lactate: How Managing Cognitive Load Unlocks Flow.
The result? Burnout, turnover, declining innovation. A systemic fragility that undermines the very value they seek to protect.
The Quarter as a Macro-Cycle
Sports science offers us an alternative. Athletes organize their training into cycles:
- Macro-cycle: the entire season, typically 3–6 months, where 1–2 peak performances are planned (decisive races). This is the strategic frame: in business, a quarter can be seen as this horizon, with one clear objective and one or two peak efforts.
- Meso-cycle: intermediate blocks of 4–6 weeks (2 or 3 agile sprints) alternating periods of load and recovery. In sports, these gradually adapt the body to more intense stimuli. In business, they are focused work blocks followed by decompression – focusing on innovation, retrospectives – improving process, and realignment – embedding emerging new habits.
- Micro-cycle: the operational level, typically a week or single days. In sports, each micro-cycle combines intense workouts, lighter sessions, and rest days. In business, this translates into protected focus time (Zone 2), no-meeting half-days, recharge moments, and weekly closure rituals.
Having a look at how an endurance athlete – such as for example a marathon runner – could prepare her season, helps understanding these concepts:
- Macro-cycle (3 months): the goal is to prepare for the spring marathon. In this period, the athlete plans 1–2 peak performances: the marathon itself and a half marathon as a test race.
- Meso-cycle (4 weeks): each block consists of 3 weeks of progressive load (more distance and intensity) followed by 1 recovery week, reducing volume by 30–40% to allow adaptation.
- Micro-cycle (1 week): a typical week looks like this:
– Monday: easy recovery run (Zone 1).
– Tuesday: intervals at race pace (Zone 4).
– Wednesday: long easy run (Zone 2).
– Thursday: full rest day.
– Friday: progression run (Zone 3).
– Saturday: strength training or cross-training.
– Sunday: long run of 28–30 km (Zone 2–3).
Rest is not a luxury, but an integral part of training: the moment when the body absorbs stimuli and builds resilience.
Speaking the Language of Boards and S(t/h)akeholders
As said executives are under pressure and often they object: ‘The market wants quarterly results!‘. True. However, markets ultimately reward continuity of value over time.
The data is clear: employees in burnout are 2.6 times more likely to be job hunting (Hubstaff, CultureMonkey). Gallup estimates that 42% of voluntary turnover could be prevented with better workload and cycle management. At a macro level, lack of engagement and chronic fatigue cost the global economy up to $8.8 trillion in lost productivity (FranklinCovey).
Burnout and turnover are hidden costs that erode human capital and competitiveness.
If we take a broader look and get deeper in understanding this phenomena, organizations that manage cycles, on the other hand, deliver repeatable returns, quarter after quarter after quarter.
Evidence supports this: a BCG study of 240 cyclical companies over 30 years identified 42 firms that consistently outperformed peers by orchestrating peaks and recoveries. McKinsey’s Performance Through People report confirms that organizations prioritizing human capital and sustainable rhythms achieve long-term outperformance.
Isn’t it a task for any executive to educate boards and investors on this cyclical logic shifts? Corroborated by data, statistics and related reports, shouldn’t they aim and lead companies shifting from a culture from continuous peaks to organizational endurance?
Conclusion
The role of the leader is not to keep pushing for more speed. It is to manage intensity, like a coach who knows when to push and when to let the team recover. In short:
- Plan for one peak per quarter (Zone 4 / Zone 5)
- Protect your team’s Zone 2 (Sustainable Focus for businesses, Aerobic Base for athletes)
- Institutionalize recovery rituals that boosts innovation (Zone 1)
- Educate stakeholders on the value of cycles
The quarter should not be a cage, but a training cycle with peaks of value delivery.
Success is not about sprinting endlessly, but about learning to shift gears. Only then can leaders deliver not just results, but sustainable, long-term performance.
Content: Human-Generated + AI Processing
