The ghost initiative

It was the quarter's "big rock," the strategic priority everyone agreed on in the offsite. Executive alignment was crystal clear. Resources were allocated. The timeline was set.

Now, six weeks later, it's a ghost initiative.

Key stakeholders are quietly de-prioritizing tasks. The energy has dissipated. You're fielding questions about "shifting focus" and "bandwidth constraints." Sound familiar?

This isn't a failure of strategy. It's a failure of consistency—and it started in your office. Most leaders operate on what I call the "Discipline Model," relying on sheer force of will to push initiatives forward. This approach is not just exhausting; it's unreliable and ultimately sabotages the very outcomes you're trying to achieve.

The willpower lie: why your toughest leaders burn out

Here's the uncomfortable truth: you've been sold a lie about what drives consistent performance. For decades, leadership development has hammered home the gospel of grit, determination, and willpower. Push through. Dig deeper. Work harder.

New research published in Psychological Science reveals why this approach consistently fails. When researchers studied people setting New Year's resolutions across multiple cultures, they discovered something counterintuitive. The people who achieved their goals weren't the ones with the strongest willpower. They were the ones who made the process genuinely enjoyable.

If willpower isn't the answer, have you been trying to solve the wrong problem all along?

The same pattern shows up in neuroscience research from the Journal of Neuroscience. When participants felt mentally fatigued, brain scans revealed that two specific regions—the right insula and dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex—were making the decision to "quit." But here's the critical insight: these decisions weren't based on actual capacity. They were based on perception.

Study participants who thought they were "done" could suddenly find massive energy reserves when offered the right incentives. Their muscles weren't depleted. Their minds had simply decided they were finished.

Your best leaders aren't failing because they lack discipline. They're failing because you've built a system that drains their mental batteries faster than it can recharge them.

The consistency engine: a new approach for executive leadership

Elite executive leadership requires a fundamental shift from the "Discipline Model" to what I call the "Design Model." Instead of relying on willpower, you architect an environment that makes consistency the path of least resistance.

This isn't about being soft or lowering standards. It's about being strategic. The research is clear: sustainable high performance comes from designing systems, not grinding through willpower.

The Design Model operates on three core principles:

Design your environment to eliminate friction for critical behaviors and add friction for counterproductive ones. Design your energy by understanding when your team operates at peak capacity and protecting those windows. Design your identity by connecting consistent actions to meaningful outcomes that people genuinely care about.

Strategy one: design your defaults instead of draining your discipline

The most powerful consistency tool isn't motivation—it's automation. When you create non-negotiable routines for high-stakes moments, it saves cognitive energy for strategic thinking.

Consider the executive who struggled with scattered priorities during quarterly planning. Instead of relying on discipline to "stay focused," she created an "always rule": no meetings, emails, or calls during the first two hours of planning days. Like brushing your teeth, it became part of the routine.

Research from Stanford reveals why this works. The more decisions you eliminate, the more mental capacity you preserve for the decisions that actually matter. This is why successful leaders batch similar tasks, standardize meeting structures, and create templates for recurring decisions.

The key isn't to have more willpower; it's to need less of it.

Your team faces the same challenge. Instead of asking people to "try harder" on critical initiatives, redesign the workflow to make success more automatic. Move obstacles out of the way rather than expecting people to overcome them through sheer determination.

Strategy two: activate the 40% rule when strategy stalls

Here's where the Navy SEAL mindset becomes a powerful executive tool. The "40% rule," popularized by David Goggins, states that when your mind tells you you're done, you're really only at 40% of your actual capacity.

When your team says, "We've hit a wall on this project," that's your cue to apply this principle strategically. Your job isn't to demand more effort—it's to ask the question that unlocks the remaining 60%: "Assuming we can't get more budget or headcount, what's the one unconventional approach we haven't tried?"

This pushes past the point of comfortable failure into the zone of innovation. The research shows that mental fatigue is often perception, not reality. But the key to accessing those reserves isn't tougher deadlines or stronger rhetoric. It's better incentives and clearer time boundaries.

A marketing director I know used this when her team claimed they couldn't improve campaign performance without additional resources. Instead of accepting the limitation, she asked: "What if we had to improve results by 20% using only what we have right now?" The constraint forced creative problem-solving that led to their most successful quarter.

From self-control to system control: scaling consistency across your team

Personal consistency is just the foundation. The real executive challenge is building organizational consistency—ensuring that your entire team maintains focus and momentum even when you're not in the room.

This requires shifting from managing individual behavior to designing team systems. The research on intrinsic motivation provides the blueprint. People maintain consistency not because they have superior willpower, but because they find genuine satisfaction in the work itself.

Your role becomes creating conditions where consistent execution feels rewarding rather than draining.

This means connecting daily tasks to meaningful outcomes. Instead of asking your team to "hit their numbers," help them see how those numbers translate to customer impact, market leadership, or personal growth. The more intrinsically rewarding you make the process, the less you'll need to rely on external pressure to maintain performance.

The accountability architecture also matters. Build systems where peer accountability replaces top-down monitoring. Create regular checkpoints that feel like progress celebrations rather than performance reviews. Make consistency visible and social rather than private and isolating.

Your first move: the default design audit

Building consistency isn't a single action; it's an operating system. But every system starts with one critical assessment: identifying where your current environment is working against you instead of with you.

This week, conduct a "default design audit" of your highest-priority initiative. Map out every step required for successful execution. Then ask these three questions:

Where are we relying on discipline instead of design? Identify the points where success depends on people "remembering" or "trying harder." These are your friction points.

What would make this process genuinely satisfying for the people doing it? Look beyond the end goal to find intrinsic rewards in the actual work.

How can we make failure more obvious and success more automatic? Design early warning systems and reduce the cognitive load on your team.

The leaders who master this transition don't just achieve their own goals more consistently—they build organizations where consistency becomes part of the culture. They understand that in a world of endless distractions and competing priorities, the competitive advantage goes to whoever can maintain focus longest.

Your legacy won't be measured by how hard you pushed. It will be measured by how effectively you designed systems that made success inevitable.

Want more?

Ready to make consistency your ultimate competitive advantage? My book, "The Consistency Effect: How to Turn Reliable Actions into Remarkable Results," is the blueprint. It's the system for turning the principles in this article into your daily practice.

Contact me at bradhenderson@me.com to continue the discussion.