“Sustainability is designed, never accidental”
Most of us don’t have a dedication problem—a lack of willingness to give our time or effort to our goals and daily tasks.
So what contributes to feelings of unsustainable performance at work?
Recent data suggests there’s something else quietly eroding workplace conditions. We tend to blame overload and overwork. But increasingly (or perhaps it’s always been an underlying and persistent issue), unsustainability is being created by organizational inefficiency.
The data points to organizations lacking clear and focused direction and not designing compelling work. Consider that:
Nearly a third of employees say unclear priorities are hurting their productivity (SurveyMonkey, 2025 Workplace Culture and Trends Study)
41% of employee time every day is spent on tasks that don’t contribute to the value the organization creates (Deloitte, 2025 Global Human Capital Trends)
Employees are now more often chronically under-challenged than overextended (ActivTrak, 2026 State of the Workplace)
My hypothesis is that employees don’t disengage because they don’t care. Rather, they disengage because their effort stops feeling worth it. They’re leaking energy—unsure where to apply their capacity and strengths against work that matters to the business and to their own growth, and unable to hold their focus due to chaotic and fragmented work environments.
This is one reason my conversation with my colleague and recent podcast guest, Todd Brock, is timely. Todd is General Manager of AMEA at Clorox. He’s a global FMCG chief executive and board leader with three decades leading complex businesses across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Australia-New Zealand.
And what Todd shared has stayed with me: “Team sustainability is designed, never accidental.”
This was our jumping-off point, and we go deep into this in the episode. Todd gets specific about what it takes to design and build sustainability and resilience into an organization. It means being clear about strategy and priorities, designing jobs and systems so the work can actually get done in a reasonable amount of time, and establishing values that guide how teams behave.
None of that sounds radical, right? The difference is that Todd works the process and builds the systems and structures that make it real—for the organization, the team, and himself. He’s highly disciplined in designing for sustainable outcomes, while many leaders unknowingly create organizational inefficiency from the top.
Why? Because sustainable performance is directly connected to strategy—intentional, conscious choices aligned to aspirations and ambitions—and the systems and structures that support it. When there’s overwork, Todd would say it’s symptomatic of a problem in one of those three elements. (Now, there are other human factors that can be at play, too, but organizations are rudderless without those foundational elements.)
With intention, these elements can be built and ingrained in how we lead. And the payoff compounds: strategy, systems, and structures don’t just guide day-to-day focus, they become the guardrails for navigating change and uncertainty. Todd speaks to this from his experience navigating the pandemic and recent instability in the Middle East.
Episode 185. Todd Brock on Building Sustainability in Our Careers and Organizations
Todd also shares his thoughts on the agency we have in shaping our careers, how ambition evolves, and what it means to build something that thrives beyond you. 🎧 Listen here.
I believe this is relevant for both organizations and individuals, and it’s why I’ve started to bring Sustainable Ambition practices to organizations. Within organizations, what Todd calls strategy, systems, and structures, I name Right Goals, Right Focus, and Right Effort:
Right Goals: Identify and connect organizational and team strategies and purpose to what personally motivates people, so engagement is real, not mandated
Right Focus: Define clear priorities so effort is focused on what matters most, not everything at once —“do more with less” ignores the system and its constraints
Right Effort: Design intentional work practices that cultivate capacities and sustain energy and performance
Sustainable performance isn’t accidental. If you’re leading others, consider whether you’ve built for Right Goals, Right Focus, and Right Effort. If you’re leading yourself, have you aligned your Right Ambition, Right Time, and Right Effort?
As we head into fall and the final stretch of the year, consider: where can you design sustainability in?
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Sustainable Ambition offers a strategic approach for pursuing our professional and personal goals in a way that is motivating, meaningful, and manageable from stage to stage, rather than be all consuming in a way that compromises other important aspects of our lives or sacrifices our well-being.