Turn on the TV, listen to a podcast, read a newspaper (does anyone actually read one anymore?), check your social news feeds, and it’s pretty depressing what’s happening ‘out there’ at the moment. It can be really overwhelming. There is no doubt that the world feels very different to how it did 25 years ago when we started Meta.
When I joined Meta in 2001 there was a genuine feeling of hope, there were new exciting organisations challenging the convention of the way business was done, young upstart entrepreneurial companies who dared to challenge the traditional ways of working.
I remember one of my first pieces of work was in Virgin Mobile, then just moving into its fourth year of being in business. This start-up business had just reached its target of 1 million customers, business was booming and, in the head office in Trowbridge, where we were working, the energy in the air was palpable. It was an exciting place to be and an exciting place to work for everyone there. I know that the Virgin brand has been somewhat tainted since then, however, Virgin at that time was a truly innovative and revolutionary place to work. It put its PEOPLE first, knowing (rightly in my opinion) that if they looked after their people they would then look after their customers and, if the customers were happy, then profits would come, and the shareholders would be happy. They put their staff FIRST and spent time building their culture on the solid foundation of the Virgin values.
The Virgin Mobile Values (circa 2001):
Challenging the status quo
Value for money and transparency
Heartfelt service
Innovation and fun
Being human
Empowered staff
We were asked by the then IT Director to work with his IT leadership team to help them translate those values into everyday working practices and develop a culture of everyday excellence. We spent about 2 or 3 years in total at Virgin Mobile in various teams and departments, and what was visibly noticeable was the drive, determination, passion and energy of everyone who worked there. You walked through the reception doors into the main offices and you could feel the ‘buzz’, the energy of the place.
Did people work hard? Yes. Did they love what they did? Yes. Did they overwork? Get overwhelmed? No. It was dynamic and genuinely an exciting and FUN place to work—they felt they were changing the game, and they understood that the journey to excellence was through investing in, developing and empowering their people to be amazing.
I’m still in touch with quite a few leaders from that organisation and they still look back with fondness on their time there. It was a culture that helped great leaders to flourish, and many went on to become CIOs, COOs and CEOs.
Virgin wasn’t the only organisation doing this. Business magazines like ‘Fast Company’ were highlighting the new companies breaking the old business rules and changing the way we think about how business could be. The old ways of doing business were being challenged, there was a genuine interest in people, leadership, and how to create an organisational culture that helped excellence to flourish.
Then there was the big financial crash of 2009 and, since then, we’ve regressed back to the old ways of business practice. At first for genuine reasons (streamlining to save organisations for example), then less so as the new ‘flatter structures’, ‘right sizing’ and ‘cost efficiencies’ were introduced by consultancy firms to the corporate (and later public sector) world.
Change the structure, the architecture and size of an organisation, and you should look at how best to work within that new structure to maximise performance. How to work cross-functionally, and how the new structure would impact your working culture. That required real investment of time, resources and yes, money, to help leaders and their teams to change their working habits of a lifetime.
Since 2009 we have been living in a boom-time for technology. Emails have become the favoured communication channel (even though no-one likes them and knows they are a poor way of communicating with people). Since the pandemic, we have now gone hybrid and ‘MS Teams’ has become the second favourite way of communicating with someone in your organisation, either via a virtual meeting or MS Teams messaging feature.
Technology was supposed to enable us, to make our working lives easier. Remember the promise of the 4-day working week???!
However, there is so much of it now that we are constantly bombarded by technology, and we feel we must be ‘permanently on’. The tide of work has fully invaded not just our work life but our home life too.
Rather than an enabler, that makes things easier, all technology does is speed things up, make us feel like we must do more, faster, and it has become something that overwhelms us.
During your working day you will be bombarded by emails, Teams (or Slack) messages, WhatsApp messages, meeting requests, diary notifications, MS Teams notifications, phone calls, urgent tasks to be done, crisis meetings.
Is it any wonder that the number one problem I see in the teams and leaders that I work with in 2026 is the problem of OVERWHELM.
Overwhelm is a very real thing and it’s time we started addressing it as leaders in organisations. I would say it is probably one of the highest risk factors in your organisation right now. YES—I am serious. It really is.
Overwhelm has many contributing factors. With the continued streamlining and restructuring of organisations, there are fewer people doing the same or more work than was previously done. When was the last time the organisational restructure gave you a bigger headcount? When was the last time you didn’t have to fight to get extra resource? (Or just replace the resource that left or went on secondment?)
Many organisations have been promoting internally as a result of the restructuring. I have seen a great rise in ‘secondments/trials’ to a higher-grade post, but often with no recompense for that step up nor the development needed to step into that leadership role. Or, indeed, a definition of ‘what success might look like’ for them in that role. Oh, and sometimes your previous role won’t be back-filled, so essentially this will be on top of your normal day job.
When fewer people are doing more, it is inevitable that sickness and turnover of staff rises too. As there is no spare capacity in teams or organisations anymore, what that means is that everyone else has to pick up those tasks too. Then there is the small matter of quality—how can you do things at the same quality level when you have more to do and less time and capacity to do it? More often than not, 75% may have to do.
Hybrid working isn’t helping with our overwhelm either. When we were in our office we normally stay with our team. If we had a challenging customer or a difficult meeting or just were struggling with something we had to get done, we could call on our colleagues to help and support us. We had those social, informal conversations, the ‘team banter’ that made us feel like we belonged, that we were part of the team. However, all of that is much trickier to do virtually. For many that leads to a sense of being alone, working solo, having to do everything themselves and that ultimately will lead an increase of stress and then into overwhelm.
Reflection and thinking time, that’s another contributing factor to our overwhelm. When was the last time you had time in your diary to properly stop, reflect and think? Our brain needs downtime to be at its best. It needs time to re-set, re-fresh and get back into peak performance. As leaders, reflection and thinking time enable us to see, prepare for, and prevent the fires that might be coming down the line. It allows us to properly plan, be pro-active not reactive. It helps us to get perspective, and not get overwhelmed.
How many meetings do you have in your average week? I was working with a senior leader recently who told me that in her average working week she had 9-hours of meetings a day. That might be extreme, but I bet you have more meetings in your diary than you do time to do your day job if you’re a leader right now—meetings overload is a real problem.
Then there is the relentless pressure of urgent tasks that keep being thrown our way. If we’re not careful we can end up just being reactive, even if we have tried to plan ahead and prioritise. We can get caught in a spiral of reactivity, every day coming into another slew of urgent emails, more fires to put out, that we know with a bit of forethought and planning we probably wouldn’t have had. However, we’re so caught in being reactive that we struggle to find the time to think ahead (see above point on thinking and reflection time.)
No time for lunch/breaks/breakfast. Most people are good people who want to do a good job. So, in order to try and get everything done, they get into the habit of working through lunch, not taking breaks and, a new worrying trend that I have seen in the last two years, is the trend of not having breakfast. There is ZERO evidence that says that not taking your breaks and not fuelling yourself improves performance or increases productivity. In fact, all the evidence says that you get less not more done per hour and your quality of work suffers (which then can lead to the need to re-do them and waste more of your time). If you miss your lunch then you’ll also just ‘run out of juice’ and, when there’s no fuel left in your tank, then that leads to you inadvertently setting off your internal stress factory.
Stress and its side-effects. When you are under stress (and if you’re experiencing all or some of the above factors in your workday, why wouldn’t you be?) it has some practical side-effects that you may not be aware of. When you are under stress, it causes your immune system to be weakened, making you more likely to get seriously ill. When your stress-factory is operating, it means you cannot make good decisions, cannot reason things through, or think things through properly. Your ability to be creative and innovative go out of the window too. You become emotionally irrational and unbalanced, which can lead you to exhibiting behaviours with colleagues that you might not be proud of with reflection.
Sleep. There is a massive epidemic of sleeplessness right now in the UK. If you’re getting under 7 hours of sleep a night, that will impact your ability to work, and over time that will lead to a higher likelihood of a more stressful day ahead and longer-term impact to your physical and mental health.
I don’t want to be all doom and gloom here but when you combine the factors above with what’s happening in the wider-world geo-politically, is it any wonder that we are feeling overwhelmed?
In 2001 when we were at Virgin Mobile, they did things differently and they did challenge the norms. However, at that time, most organisations understood that to get the best from their people, their leaders, they needed to invest in them and develop them. Almost every organisation (certainly in the corporate and public sectors) would have management and leadership development programmes, and training budgets (held by the departmental heads) that they were allowed to spend on their people.
During the pandemic, when we were facing the existential threat of the corona-virus, organisations realised that they needed to support their people. I did a considerable amount of work with charities, and public sector organisations to help them re-build resilience and support their staff during that time. But post-pandemic, how much support has been given?
We are now in a new era of need. As leaders and as organisations we need to start addressing the very real issue of OVERWHELM in our workforce. The pace of work has been unrelenting since the end of the pandemic. In fact, for many, the level of workload has gone up in that time. The cracks are already appearing—look at your sickness and, especially, long-term sickness levels in your organisations; look at the turnover of staff; look at the obvious levels of stress exhibited by the people in your organisation.
I am seeing OVERWHELM in almost every leader and staff member I have come across in the last 2-3 years. I believe it’s something that, as leaders in organisations, we need to take more seriously. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it will help and aid our business to be successful—it makes sound business sense to look after your people.
Virgin Mobile knew that in 2001. Now it’s your turn to buck the trend, to challenge the norms, dare to do it differently, and use this reminder to truly check in with your staff, your people. How ARE they? How ARE YOU??
The GOOD NEWS is that it doesn’t take much to do something about it. It requires a leadership decision to do something about it and invest time, and yes, put aside a little budget to do something with your people to tackle the causes of overwhelm and give them the tools to be more resilient.
At Meta we are committed to not just highlighting the issues that are currently impacting organisations, the leaders and the people in our Meta family through articles like this, but also helping you to find the solutions and supporting you on that journey. Our resilience toolkit is a good ‘starter for 10’—a 3-day programme that gives those that attend their own personalised toolkit to help deal with stress, re-build resilience, work in a smarter way, and get a good night’s sleep. It gives your organisation a more resilient workforce that can deal with the inevitable challenges and stresses that will come their way.
But we have so much more that we could do with you. We can help you to equip and upskill your leaders and workforce so that you can banish overwhelm and improve your organisational culture, so that you too can develop a true culture of excellence that enables your people and your organisation to thrive.
Wouldn’t you love your team, your organisation to have that palpable ‘buzz’, energy and drive that was in the Virgin Mobile offices in 2001?
If the answer is yes to any of the above, if this article has made you seriously think about doing something with your team, your leaders, your people. Then get in touch!
Conversations don’t cost you a penny, and the solutions will cost a lot less than you think! So why not have that initial conversation and get serious about reducing the risk of overwhelm in your people and your organisation?
So go on, dare to be different—do something today that will make a REAL SUSTAINABLE DIFFERENCE.
My email is: jo@metapositive.com – I look forward to hearing from you!
Remember Meta is in business to help support you, your people and your organisation anyway we can.
And by the way, if your organisation isn’t gonna do this, we can also support you personally—we can arrange personal 1-1’s to reduce your stress/overwhelm levels too!
In peace and with love,
Jo xx
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