Most of the leaders I coach had tried everything. Systems, frameworks, tools, books, authors.
It helped them in the beginning. Then it became overwhelming.
They started to feel like nothing was working. Or worse, that nothing could work for them.
I noticed this pattern early. First within myself.
As a chronic high achiever, I was implementing absolutely everything I could get my hands on. But here's what happens: you start to ruin the cake when you're putting too many ingredients in it.
The Framework Collector's Dilemma
The warning sign is clear. Every month, you're raving about some new book, principle, or methodology.
You're all in. Again.
It's one thing to read a book, get excited, and take away a few golden nuggets. It's another thing entirely to completely switch up how you live and work with each new framework.
Without a central operating system or set of guiding principles, you'll collect frameworks but barely implement any of them.
Going back to my cake analogy: you end up with a cake that has way too many ingredients. You could have made six different cakes with six different recipes.
Instead, you tried to make them all at once.
The result? A mess nobody wants to eat.
When Matters More Than What
My lightbulb moment came when I read Predictable Success by Les McKeown.
It was one of the first leadership books that answered the question of when something should be applied instead of everything all the time.
This changed how I looked at team dynamics and individual leadership development. There's a compounding effect if you get the order right.
It also gave me permission to say "not right now" to certain frameworks, alleviating the shame and mental burden of trying to get everything right from the beginning.
According to Les McKeown, 80% of new ventures fail during both recession and growth periods, often because leaders implement too many frameworks simultaneously without understanding proper sequence (source).
The Three Deadly Framework Sins
After years of watching leaders struggle, I've identified three deadly framework sins that sabotage effectiveness.
First: Getting the timing wrong.
Knowing when to implement something is often more important than what you're implementing. Apply systems too early, and you stifle the innovation and flexibility needed to grow.
Second: Trying to implement it yourself.
Most leaders can't facilitate and participate simultaneously. This means one of your key leaders isn't fully connected to the work, which burns them out and misses crucial opportunities.
Third: Rolling it out to the entire organization at once.
Until your senior leadership team deeply understands a framework, there's no benefit to pushing it further down. Half-baked implementations yield bad results, not what the framework promises.
This damages your credibility. Your team becomes cynical about the next program, even if your intentions are good.
The Change Management Whiplash
The most damaging consequence? Change management whiplash.
When you throw too many new systems, programs, processes, and frameworks at people in a short time, you exhaust them.
This doesn't mean things can't move quickly as your organization evolves. But if you try to do everything at once, you'll lose talented people who were committed to your mission.
People who could have taken your organization further than you could alone.
Identity Before Action
Action should be the last step.
It's fine to go 100 miles an hour. But if you're headed in the wrong direction, you're not creating a neutral impact. You're actively damaging what you could have helped.
If we start from wrong beliefs about ourselves, our team, or our organization (because yes, organizations have identities too), we can't create alignment.
Without alignment, we go a millimeter in a thousand directions instead of a mile in one.
Any action based on a falsely built plan just sets us back or actively hurts us.
Research confirms this approach. McKinsey's 7-S model identifies strategy, structure, and systems as "hard elements" easier to change, while staff, skills, leadership style, and shared values are "soft elements" that are more difficult but foundational (source).
My Controversial Detox Plan
My advice? Drop every framework. All of them.
Strip it down to the studs. Go a couple of weeks just paying attention to what you pay attention to.
Notice if there's rhythm or lack of rhythm in your schedule and tasks.
Start noticing where you get energy and what drains it.
After two weeks, note where you feel pulled in too many directions. When do you find flow?
Then look for frameworks from people who were in your situation but are now a few years ahead. See what worked for them.
It's tempting to follow framework creators. They're smart. Most genuinely want to help. But they rarely distinguish between who they're talking to and what they did before creating their framework.
It's like an NFL player telling you to work out like a pro when you've never played more than peewee football. They worked up to that level. They didn't start there.
Rhythm Over Reaction
Operating rhythm is my alternative to framework addiction.
Think about your body. It works best when your sleep schedule is consistent. When you drink enough water. When you get enough exercise and sunlight. When you eat a varied diet at regular times.
This is well-documented. Your body thrives on rhythm.
The same applies to leadership and organizations. Understanding your ideal rhythm means not every waking minute requires your full brainpower and energy.
We'd be exhausted before lunch if that's how we lived. Yet many leaders do feel this way because they're subject to the tyranny of the urgent.
They live in reaction instead of rhythm.
Traditional approaches say you should live and die by your calendar. But your calendar is subject to everyone else's demands.
Instead, take agency. Notice when you do your best work. When meetings energize rather than drain you. When your energy dips and flows.
Most traditional approaches offer a one-size-fits-all template instead of guiding principles you can adapt.
Studies show that effective operating rhythms require a cadence that aligns an organization both vertically and horizontally. Yet only 46% of organizations say their teams collaborate in ways that contribute to overall success (source).
Principles Over Prescriptions
Being from Texas, I'd say you need to chew up the meat and spit out the bones.
Keep the principles that undergird what you've learned. The spirit and essence, not the rigid prescription.
I heard a leader at a conference say: "Want what I want, don't do what I do."
His organization had a much larger budget for impressive programs. But his desire for a particular outcome was the same as everyone else's in the room.
It's easy to confuse wanting what somebody wants with doing what they do, thinking it'll lead to the same results.
That's like using entirely different ingredients but expecting the same cake. It can't happen.
Strip it back to the principles that spoke to you as a leader in that moment. Build on those.
How you express it may be altogether different from the person you learned from.
A Real-World Example
One client had used a previous framework for his organization, then cobbled together various tools he found helpful. Nothing was cohesive.
Since we started working together, we've talked about not being drawn to the flavor of the month or the newest thing in his industry.
As he focused on our core set of tools, I noticed he protected more of his time. He spent more time doing what a visionary CEO should do.
He became more trusting of his COO because the tools applied to her and the rest of the organization too.
He's seeing the benefit of alignment instead of everyone operating with different methodologies based on department or hierarchy level.
The 80% Rule
Should you throw out 80% of what you've learned about leadership?
Yes. But be selective about what you keep.
Keep the principles, not the prescriptions.
The spirit, not the rigid application.
The essence, not the exact steps.
Your leadership journey isn't about collecting more tools. It's about finding the right rhythm.
It's not about having more frameworks. It's about knowing which ones to use when, and in what order.
Because leadership frameworks do fail when stacked arbitrarily.
But when applied with intention, sequence, and rhythm?
That's when you finally scale what's worth keeping.