Hi,

Nobody starts training for their first marathon the week before the race.

You’d laugh at anyone who tried. You don’t run 42 kilometres on a week of panic and good intentions. The body that crosses that line was built over months, one unglamorous run at a time. The result was decided long before the starting gun, by whether you trained when it didn’t feel urgent.

And yet we run our businesses exactly like that.

watts not working: Treating the things that build a strong team as optional when things are calm.

When performance is fine and nobody’s quitting, the one-to-ones slip. The feedback waits. The training gets bumped for something “more important.” It feels responsible, even. Why pour time into what’s already working when there are actual fires to fight?

Then someone great resigns, or the team can’t deliver what you sold, or your best person quietly checks out. And suddenly you want it all fixed by Friday.

watts really happening: The stuff that actually protects you has no scoreboard today.

A good one-to-one this week doesn’t show up in this week’s numbers. Feedback given today pays off in three months. Building a manager now prevents a mess you’ll never even see coming. None of it screams for attention, so it always loses to the thing that does.

And here’s the cruel part: you never get to feel it working. Nobody sits down on a calm Tuesday and thinks, “thank god I kept up the one-to-ones for seven months, that’s why nothing’s falling apart today.” The reward for doing it is a fire that never starts, and you can’t see a fire that never starts. So it feels like nothing, and nothing is easy to skip.

That’s the trap. The work that prevents the fire is invisible right up until the moment it would have saved you.

watts actually working: The founders who don’t get blindsided treat the boring stuff as the main stuff.

They keep the one-to-ones when there’s no problem to solve, because that’s what stops the problem forming. They give the small piece of feedback now instead of the big painful one later. They build the manager before they need the manager.

It isn’t more effort. It’s the same effort, done consistently over time instead of crammed into a panic.

watts the real game changer: By the time it’s urgent, it’s already too late for the quick version.

You cannot crash-diet a culture. The team you’ll have when things get hard is the one you’re building right now, while things are easy and it feels like you could skip it.

Ask yourself: what am I skipping this month because nothing’s on fire? That’s the exact thing that decides whether next quarter burns.

Have a week of showing up before you have to!

Sel Watts

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P.S. We invite you to visit the wattsnextpx website for more valuable HR content and news.