Hidden Cost of Doing Too Much

Week 1 – Series: Do Less, Grow More (More Work ≠ More Growth)

A second-generation leader I worked with in the UAE once told me, “We’re running all day – sales calls, client fires, dashboards. Growth should follow, right?” He wasn’t wrong about the effort, but he was confusing motion with momentum. His team were constantly active, while he approved every decision. But despite the pace, their quarter slipped. It wasn’t a laziness problem but a leverage blind spot.

This is the hidden trap for many SME leaders, founders, and successors alike. They believe that being everywhere signals leadership, hustle proves commitment, and the more you do, the more you grow. But over-effort isn’t a sign of strength; it’s a signal that the system doesn’t work without you.

In most family businesses, effort becomes the default currency of trust:You show you care by staying in the loop. You prove commitment by replying at midnight.But over time, this turns into something else.

Emotional recursion = jab hum har kaam khud karke team ka bharosa kam karte hain

When leaders never exit the loop, teams stop learning to move without them.

The Myth: Hustle Means Leadership. Visibility Means Control.

Many business owners wear overwork like a badge: “I'm in every meeting”, “I review every proposal”, and “I fix things at midnight.” But when you're in every loop, every loop starts waiting for you. That’s not leadership; that’s infrastructure. And infrastructure doesn’t scale; it just holds weight until it breaks.

The Flaw: You’re Stuck in the Chakravyuh You Built

This reminds me of Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata – brave, committed, and at the center of the battle, but stuck inside a chakravyuh (a type of battle formation) he didn’t know how to exit. That’s how many founders operate. They build systems but then stay too embedded, fighting every escalation, rewriting every email, and reviewing every deal.

Not because the team is weak, but because the founder never designed an exit.

chakravyuh = jab system se nikalne ka rasta hi nahi hota

And when the leader is everywhere, decision fatigue sets in, team initiative drops and the business becomes speed without steering.

The Reframe: Real Leaders Don’t Just Act, They Orchestrate

Now contrast Abhimanyu with Krishna. He never picked up a weapon but changed the outcome of every battle. Not by doing more, but by designing better.

Krishna built rhythm: who decides, who escalates, and what happens when? That’s what true delegation looks like – not letting go of tasks, but letting go of being the fallback.

We once worked with a founder of a speciality retail business who operated like Abhimanyu – present in everything – sales, operations, and even HR interviews. We helped him design exit logic:

• Defined decision windows

• Escalation paths through managers, not DMs

• “Done” definitions for every workflow

Three months later, he closed a JV while his team delivered client work without him.

What changed? Not effort, but structure. He stopped being the signal for every move. The team had clarity on what “done” looked like, how to escalate, and when to move without him. They didn’t just ship faster; they made better decisions because the rhythm was doing the supervision.

The Real Cost of Over-Effort

When founders over-effort, they:

• Block succession

• Stall rhythm

• Trap their own growth

Worse, they train the team to wait. Every time you say, “I’ll just do it,” you teach someone not to.

manual override = jab system ko bypass karanese se kaam hota hai

Every late-night WhatsApp override tells the team that structure is optional.

While Abhimanyu fought hard, Krishna never fought, and only one of them scaled the strategy. Ask yourself:

• Are you building systems you can exit – or just traps you keep re-entering?

• Are you rewarding firefighting or enabling rhythm?

• Are you still the one everyone waits for?

Effort is not the enemy; unstructured effort is.

Scale isn’t about showing up harder; it’s about designing so you don’t have to.

(The author is a co-founder at PPS Consulting. He is a business transformation consultant. He could be reached at rahul@ppsconsulting.biz.)