Episode Player

Stop Celebrating The Hero And Start Hiring The Team

The Digital Transformation Playbook

Chapters
0:04
Leadership Through A Running Lens
1:12
The Business Athlete And Their Team
2:16
Exhaustion Culture And Constant Pressure
5:04
Routines That Survive Curveballs
7:47
High-Impact Calendars And Peak Flow
12:33
Deliberate Practice Beyond Experience
13:54
Recovery Versus Always-On And AI Pressure
18:20
Shared Ownership Of Performance And Growth
20:54
HR, Leadership And The Performance Environment
24:27
Mission First Then Build The System
30:24
Designing A Real Athlete Village At Work
33:28
Practical Takeaways To Close
The Digital Transformation Playbook
Stop Celebrating The Hero And Start Hiring The Team
Jul 08, 2026
Kieran Gilmurray

You can hear it in the way people talk about work right now: everything is urgent, everyone is stretched, and “high performance” has quietly become shorthand for constant output. We take a different angle by starting with a running truth that’s hard to argue with. 

Nobody signs up for a half marathon and expects to wing it on the day, so why do we promote people into leadership and then act surprised when they struggle without training, coaching, or recovery?

TL;DR / At A Glance:

• running as a clear model for planning, consistency and recovery
• leaders as business athletes supported by a real performance team
• why constant pressure creates exhaustion and weaker decisions
• routines, habits and flexibility when curveballs hit the diary
• building a high-impact calendar with big rocks and peak flow
• deliberate practice, feedback and the limits of “experience”
• recovery as a performance lever and the risks of always-on culture

Kieran Gilmurray and Laura Lawless explore the idea of leaders as business athletes, and what that metaphor reveals about modern organisations. We talk about the unseen teams behind elite performance and why workplaces often do the opposite: deliver at 120%, transform in 90 days, hit the numbers, repeat. 

They dig into routines that actually hold up in the real world, including high-impact calendars, time blocking the “big rocks”, and working with peak flow rather than fighting it. We also get blunt about the signals leaders send when coaching and development are always the first things dropped.

From there, they challenge the always-on culture that normalises burnout, and we discuss how AI can unintentionally accelerate the “more tech, more work” loop, with a real psychosocial impact on agency and wellbeing. We push on the tension between personal responsibility and organisational responsibility, and we unpack what HR can enable versus what leaders and individuals must own. The thread that ties it all together is simple: performance is an outcome, but practice, support systems, and recovery are the foundations.

If you want practical, grounded ideas for leadership development, executive coaching habits, sustainable performance, and building a culture where people can do their best work, press play. 

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📕 Want to learn more about agentic AI then read my new book on Agentic AI and the Future of Work https://tinyurl.com/MyBooksOnAmazonUK