When Jacinda Ardern announced she would step down as Prime Minister of New Zealand, she did not cite political defeat or loss of support. Instead, she offered a strikingly human explanation: she no longer had “enough in the tank” to do the role justice.

Her decision sparked global discussion about leadership, endurance and burnout. It challenged the long-standing belief that strength means pushing through exhaustion, regardless of cost.

For leaders across business and government, however, the moment raised a deeper question: if even the most capable leaders can reach the limits of human energy, what does that say about the expectations placed on people throughout our organizations?

Increasingly, the evidence indicates that burnout is not primarily a resilience problem. It is a work design challenge.

Why wellbeing programs fail

Over the past decade organizations have invested heavily in employee wellbeing. Resilience training, mindfulness programs, mental health apps and employee assistance services have become common features of the modern workplace.

These initiatives can provide important support to individuals experiencing stress. Yet burnout remains widespread across many industries, and in some sectors it appears to be increasing.

The reason is straightforward: wellbeing initiatives cannot compensate for poorly designed work.

When the pressures of work consistently outpace the capacity people have to perform effectively, exhaustion becomes inevitable. Heavy workloads, unclear priorities, constant digital interruption and expanding responsibilities without removing legacy tasks create systems where pressure accumulates faster than people can recover.

In these conditions, teaching individuals to cope better treats the symptom rather than the cause. Burnout becomes a signal that the system of work needs to change.

The hidden costs

The consequences extend well beyond employee wellbeing. High-strain work systems carry hidden costs that directly affect organizational performance.

Burnout rarely appears suddenly. It develops gradually when sustained pressure, fragmented attention and limited recovery steadily erode the cognitive capacity employees rely on to perform well. Focus narrows. Decision quality declines. Creativity suffers.

Over time, this undermines the capabilities organizations depend on to execute strategy in complex and rapidly changing environments. High performers who often carry the greatest workload are frequently the first to disengage or leave when pressure becomes persistently unsustainable.

What appears to be a people issue is often a structural performance risk embedded in how work is organized.

Why managers remain the biggest lever

Despite advances in technology and evolving organizational structures, the daily experience of work is still largely shaped by managers.

Managers determine how work is prioritized, how workloads are allocated and how competing demands are navigated. They influence whether employees experience clarity or confusion, autonomy or micromanagement, support or isolation.

Decades of research consistently show the manager–employee relationship remains one of the strongest predictors of engagement, performance and retention. And it makes sense. Managers ultimately determine how strategy actually shows up in daily work. When they are overloaded, unclear about priorities or under-supported, strain cascades quickly through the system.

Conversely, when managers create clarity, focus and trust, both performance and wellbeing improve. Strengthening managerial capability therefore remains one of the most powerful levers organizations have to improve outcomes.

Why leadership matters

For some leaders, high pressure becomes conflated with high performance. Urgency is mistaken for strategy. Incentive structures, short leadership tenures and relentless quarterly pressure can reinforce these behaviors even when intentions are good.

When burnout becomes widespread, it rarely signals a lack of resilience. More often it reflects that leadership teams have not yet made the hard strategic choices about what work truly matters – and what should stop. In this sense, burnout can act as an early warning that the system itself needs reinvention.

At ByMany, we increasingly observe that the organizations best positioned to succeed are those willing to rethink not only their business models, but the way work itself is designed.

The role of leadership becomes even more important as AI and automation reshape work.

Technology can increase efficiency and accelerate decision-making, but it can also intensify workloads if poorly implemented. Digital tools expand the flow of information employees must process and create constant pressure for responsiveness.

At the same time, the work that remains uniquely human increasingly depends on judgement, creativity, collaboration and trust. These capabilities flourish in environments where people have clarity about priorities, psychological safety to contribute ideas and the cognitive space required for deep thinking.

In an AI-enabled world, leadership becomes less about directing tasks and more about designing the conditions in which people can perform at their best.

Practical shifts CEOs can make

Addressing burnout does not require lowering ambition or sacrificing standards. It requires greater intentionality about how work itself is designed.

A useful way to think about sustainable performance is through three elements: load, latitude and leadership.

• Load is the volume and pace of work people are expected to carry. When priorities keep expanding without anything being removed, pressure accumulates quickly.
• Latitude is the degree of autonomy people have in how they do their work. Even demanding roles can remain energizing when individuals have control over how they organize their effort.
• Leadership is the environment managers create around both — balancing expectations with support, setting clear priorities and ensuring people feel both challenged and cared for.

When load rises while latitude and support remain low, burnout risk increases rapidly. When these three elements are in balance, performance becomes far more sustainable.

For CEOs, the opportunity is not simply to invest in wellbeing programs, but to treat work design as a leadership responsibility. Clarifying priorities, removing unnecessary work and equipping managers to support their teams are practical steps that can immediately improve both performance and wellbeing.

In the end, the future of high performance will depend less on how resilient employees are and more on how intelligently leaders design the work they ask their teams to do.

Opinions expressed by The CEO Magazine contributors are their own.