Most people still measure performance in hours. They fill their calendars as full as possible, track time minute by minute, and pride themselves on dedicating more time to each day. However, the best performance comes from harnessing rhythm: the alignment of energy, ability and focus. It’s what turns effort into flow.
In the industrial age, managing time made sense: productivity was tied to factory shifts and desk hours. But in today’s BANI world (fragile, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible), hours invested no longer clearly translate into value created.
Leaders who thrive now are those who feel and master the rhythms of their team. Energy rises and falls throughout the day. Care cycles alter capacity. Strategies are developed in waves of preparation, concentration and execution. When these rhythms reinforce each other, the performance worsens; When they diverge, even the most talented teams struggle.
The challenge is that most of these confrontations remain invisible. We believe they are the result of individual personality traits or bad luck. The reality is that they are systemic patterns that silently deplete performance. Here are the three invisible problems plaguing your team, along with strategies to address them.
1. Biological misalignment
It’s 8:30 am and the leadership team is gathering for their weekly meeting. Early Birds are full of energy and ready to make decisions. The Night Owls are still getting hot and contributing less than they could. By mid-afternoon, the balance shifts, but decisions have already been made.
Each team includes a variety of chronotypes. Some people think more clearly before breakfast; others reached their creative peak at the end of the day. Standard nine-to-five routines privilege one end of that spectrum and leave the rest functioning below their best.
Research in chronobiology highlights the effect. Social jet lag, the mismatch between biological and social clocks, impairs alertness and cognitive function. Teams experience more rework, slower problem solving, and lower creativity when the shared schedule doesn’t adequately accommodate people’s natural peaks.
AbbVie Norway, part of global biopharmaceutical company AbbVie, set out to improve low employee satisfaction with work-life balance and strengthen its ability to attract and retain top talent. Leaders restructured the design of work so that employees could align their hours with their natural rhythms, holding meetings only between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and allowing full flexibility as long as results were achieved. The changes paid off: turnover and sick leave decreased dramatically, satisfaction with work-life balance increased from 58% to 95%, and AbbVie Norway has been named one of Norway’s best places to work several times by Great Place to Work.
What to do when biology and schedule diverge
- Turn the clock: Alternate early and later starts for recurring meetings.
- Separate information from decisions: share context asynchronously; Save live sessions for discussion and engagement.
- Map energy windows: Have people mark their sharpest 90 to 120 minute blocks and protect them.
- Design quiet blocks: Incorporate predictable meeting-free hours each week.
- Publish your own pace: When leaders model their preferred windows, others feel confident doing the same.
The reward comes in the form of increased engagement, high-quality ideas, and better decisions. Teams spend more time progressing work and less time recovering from poorly timed interactions.
2. Life stage and relationship cycles
It’s Wednesday afternoon, three weeks before launch. A product leader is caring for an elderly parent. A colleague is co-parenting a custodial toddler every other week. They are both very committed and highly trained. Both have a capacity that ebbs and flows in cycles that your work plan does not take into account. As a result, unnecessary stress builds up and cracks begin to appear in your relationship.
Capacity rarely follows a flat line. Parenting schedules, elder care demands, study commitments, personal health, and community roles create repeating patterns. When teams thrive, these patterns are visible and part of the planning.
Our own work carries this reality. Camilla alternates weeks of intense care and weeks of greater availability. David structures his day around defined periods of care for his disabled son. These rhythms determine when deep work and collaboration can occur, and strengthen performance when leaders plan accordingly.
In 2011, the Norwegian Bar Association began a cultural transformation to align working hours with employees’ natural rhythms and personal responsibilities. Led by Secretary General Magne Skram Hegerberg and supported by the Life Navigation framework, the organization symbolically buried its wall-mounted recording machine, replacing rigid time tracking with a focus on results and skills. Employees were encouraged to align their work hours with their chronotypes and care needs, with start times ranging from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Productivity doubled in some areas and creativity and problem-solving flourished. To make peak power hours visible, some employees even used a stuffed frog on their desk to signal “do not disturb.”
What to do when the rhythms of life shape capacity
- Sequence the load: Assign heavier tasks to higher capacity weeks.
- Create coverage by design: combine people or build small groups for critical responsibilities.
- Point out the cycle: Encourage the sharing of simple, recurring ability patterns.
- Match the mode of work to the week: plan highly collaborative activities for periods of higher capacity.
- Develop recovery in public: name the decompression phases so that rest appears as part of the plan.
The reward comes in the form of increased loyalty, sustained dedication, and less firefighting. People stay, grow, and contribute at a high level throughout various stages of life, rather than drifting away.
3. Strategic intimacy
It’s Friday morning at the end of term. Finance is closing the books, sales is finishing a sprint, and HR is finalizing reviews. C-Suite leaders then reveal a flagship initiative and ask everyone to get to work. The purpose of the initiative is strong, but its launch comes at the lowest energy point in the team cycle.
Organizational habits often set the pace: end-of-quarter pushes, annual summits, weekly status rituals. Meanwhile, strategy moves in waves that benefit from different types of energy: exploration and framing, focused construction, high-paced collaboration, delivery and learning. Peak efforts flourish when the strategic wave and human energy peak together.
At GuldBoSund, a nursing home and rehabilitation center in Denmark, staff redesigned daily routines around residents’ preferred rhythms rather than a fixed schedule. One resident enjoys coffee and breakfast at 5:30 a.m., while others sleep until 9:30. Staff also adjusted their own shifts to better fit their personal energy cycles, coordinating care so that residents’ needs were always met. The result: Residents experienced a better quality of life and staff took fewer than two sick days per year on average, including night shift workers. The example shows that when human rhythms are respected, well-being and performance strengthen each other.
What to do when time weakens the strategy
- Map out an energy calendar: map recurring highs and lows and overlay strategic waves.
- Concentrate the spikes: Design a few shared waves rather than spreading out the intensity.
- Organize the build: Use short “rhythmic sprints” before high-risk moments and then do cooldowns to consolidate learning.
- Anchor the why of co-location: Mark the specific times when being in person creates enormous value.
- Measure Cadence and Milestones: Track pacing status with metrics like rework, decision latency, and recovery time.
The reward comes in the form of stronger execution when it matters, with a team resilient enough to repeat success every cycle.
Making the invisible visible: a mini playbook
Rhythm becomes central to team performance once it becomes visible. Leaders can set the tone with a few simple practices:
- Rhythm mapping. Conduct a short survey or whiteboard session that asks three questions: When does focus feel strongest? When is collaboration easier? Where do we lose flow? Turn the answers into a one-page map for the team.
- Shared cadence letter. Agree on weekly and monthly rhythm: deep work periods, meeting windows, response expectations, and decision rituals. Keep it light and visible; update as work evolves.
- Quarterly rhythm review. Look back at the past cycle: where did the energy increase or decrease? What crashed? What flowed? Adjust the next cycle accordingly.
- Transparency of the leader’s rhythm. Publish your own focus windows, collaboration preferences, and recovery practices. Model the behavior you want the team to adopt.
- Recovery as a capacity. Teach practical reset rituals, such as after-action reviews that end with gratitude, shorter meetings with clear outcomes, short blocks without meetings after launches, and flexible Fridays during off-peak periods.
These measures require little budget and provide immediate benefits: clearer attention, fewer collisions, and more consistent progress.
The leadership advantage
The three invisible problems (biological misalignment, life stages and relationship cycles, and lack of strategic coordination) act as a major drag on team performance.
Pace-conscious leadership treats energy, capacity, and time as strategic assets. It sets the conditions for better decisions, breakthroughs in innovation and a sustainable pace of work. Organizations that move at pace build trust faster, integrate new technology more seamlessly, and retain the people they need for the long term.
Managing time improves efficiency. Leading with pace creates a strategic advantage. The best leaders combine both.