There’s a kind of business firefighting that slowly takes over everything.
By the end of the week, you’ve dealt with a lot and still feel like the real work never got touched. The thinking that moves the business forward got crowded out again.
Daphne Mavroudi-Chocholi, who writes All the Margins, has led through exactly that kind of pressure.
In this guest piece, she writes about what reactive leadership does to your judgement, your calendar, and the quality of the decisions your business gets from you. 👇🏻
Urgency takes the week before strategy touches it
You can lose a whole week to other people’s urgency and barely notice it happening. Someone is always awake, constantly working, and usually needs something right now.
By Friday, you realise most of your time went on dealing with whatever reached you first, not on the work that actually needed your judgement.
That matters more now because AI is making execution cheaper and judgement more important. If your week is filled by whatever feels urgent, you lose the part of the job that still needs you most.
I learned the hard way, leading large international teams, that without protected time every day brought its own urgent crisis and I lost the thread of what I was actually there to do.
Each one pulled me further from the work that actually needed me. A client fire drill on Monday. A team member falling behind on Tuesday. A data cleansing crisis. A third-party supplier failing again.
The cost hit in ways I didn’t see quickly enough. Two members of my leadership team were pulling their teams in opposite directions. I was so consumed by the daily fire drills that I spotted the problem too late, and the damage was already done.
By the end of some weeks I was running on empty. My decisions were reactive, shaped by someone else’s emergency rather than a direction I’d chosen.
On Monday mornings, when we sat down to set priorities for the week, I was carrying the residue of everyone else’s week into that meeting. The tail was wagging the dog.
The problem looked like a workload problem. It ran much deeper.
When you haven’t had space to step back, you stop thinking ahead and start managing whatever is right in front of you.
Reactive mode cuts off the kind of thinking that moves things forward. You deal with what’s in front of you and lose sight of where things are heading. That space isn’t going to appear on its own.
Once I realised the system is designed to consume your attention, everything changed. I became much stricter about where my time goes and less willing to give it away just because something feels urgent.
Research found that unfolding events consume around 36% of a CEO’s time. The real skill is knowing which events deserve your attention.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Protect the time first
No-meeting Fridays are a default for me, not an absolute rule. There are always exceptions.
Protecting Friday changes the whole week. It creates room for proper thinking and for conversations that are not squeezed between back-to-back calls. Walking helps too. Indoors or outdoors, it’s better for creative thinking than sitting.
This year I introduced office hours. It’s a recurring slot for the smaller asks that would otherwise arrive as mid-day interruptions: a ten-minute conversation, a yes or no, a sign-off on a logo design or a client response.
It takes around 23 minutes to regain full focus after an interruption. Putting smaller asks into a predictable slot gives the team a reliable rhythm and gives me back time to concentrate.
I also request agendas before meetings. Not to control the conversation, but to give myself time to reflect, think through my questions and the points I want to make.
Writing them down means I won’t get pulled into someone else’s agenda. My thinking stays clearer and I’m less likely to lose the point.
See where your focus is
A colour-coded diary sounds too simple to matter. It isn’t. When I look at my week in colour, I can see where my attention’s really going. That’s often not where I thought it was. A week that feels balanced rarely looks that way when you map it honestly.
My gym time goes in the diary too, even though it sits outside office hours. If it’s not scheduled, it won’t happen. I repeat that to my team regularly. The week will fill, and it’ll be the first thing to go.
If you don’t protect it, the week usually pushes it out.
Track your attention
Quarterly reviews, client deadlines, and team issues will always be more pressing than learning time. Without blocked time, the calendar fills before learning gets a look in.
I’ve found a way to protect it, though not yet where I want it. For now, it sits on Saturday mornings. It’s in the diary, it’s visible, and I’ve arranged other personal and family commitments around it to make it real.
That matters because it signals to everyone, including me, that this isn’t optional. I’m working to bring it into the working week, where it belongs. But it only gets done if you start where it fits.
The week won’t give you the space to think. You have to make it. Start with the calendar. Look at this week’s diary. Is it shaped by what matters, or by whatever got to you first?
👤 Daphne Mavroudi-Chocholi writes All the Margins, for people who are accomplished, stretched, and quietly asking themselves whether this is really as good as it gets. She has built and turned around businesses across neuroscience, AI, accessibility, and pet care, led teams, managed boards, and made difficult decisions without a manual. Connect with Daphne on LinkedIn.
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