Your Best People Are Too Busy to Get Better. Here's Why

Your best people are probably too busy to get any better.

And the fix usually starts with whoever sets their calendar.

Think about how a touring band works.

Behind every 2-hour show, there are weeks of rehearsals nobody in the crowd ever sees.
Running the same song over and over, trying arrangements that fall flat, and getting notes from someone who can hear what they can't.

Athletes work the same way.
A sprinter can put months of training into a race that's over in 10 seconds.

By the time either of them steps out in front of a crowd, most of the work is already done.

At work, 80% of the time it's run the other way around.

People spend almost every hour performing, and development gets squeezed into whatever time is left over.

Then we're surprised when talented people level off.

I get why it happens.

When you're running an agency, there's always another deliverable due.
And pulling someone off client work to learn something new can feel impossible in a busy week.

But you can't ask someone to grow and then give them 0 room to do it.

Here are a few ways I try to build that room into how we work at Fluency Firm:

→ Bringing people into strategy calls before they're the one leading them.
→ Walking through why a test won, instead of just sharing the result.
→ Giving our creative team space to test ideas that never have to run for a client.
→ Handing someone a bigger call before they feel completely ready for it.

None of us are rock stars or Olympians, sadly 😂

But I do think the best teams borrow more from the rehearsal room and the training ground than they realize.

Performance is what people see.
Practice is what makes it possible.

How much of your team's week goes to getting better?

♻️ Repost for a leader whose team hasn't had a rehearsal in months.
And follow me, Jacob Rokeach, for more on leadership and building as an operator.