Most resilience programs don’t fail because the plans are wrong. They fail because capable leaders make the work more complicated than it needs to be, and never tie it back to the business.
In this episode, Bryan Strawser of Bryghtpath explains the complexity tax and why “adding rigor” usually makes things worse. Bryan walks through the five ways good leaders overcomplicate resilience. A structure no one can explain, terminology that hides meaning, plans untethered from the business, borrowed confidence about plans you don’t understand, and solving confusion by adding more process. Each one comes from caring and knowing a lot, not from incompetence.
Then he lays out the fix, which is discipline, not sophistication. Explain the program in five sentences, cut the acronyms, anchor every plan to a business outcome, and subtract before you add. A program that works is the one a tired person can run correctly at the worst possible moment.
