Boring
The strongest leaders are often the least noisy. The ones who move like the tide, constant, quiet, and inevitable. I remember a moment early in my career when I was offered a shot at something that felt, in every sense, bigger than me. It wasn’t just a promotion, it was a leap into a role I had never done before. One of those “this could either define me or break me” situations.
I sat across from the APJ leader, a man who bore the weight of the region’s performance in his voice. He wasn’t looking for potential, he was looking for certainty. “This is not a role I can afford to get wrong,” he said. “Why should I choose you? What can you promise me?”
I thought for a moment. Not about ambition, but about outcomes. “I’ll make the role boring,” I said. And I meant it.
Boring, in that moment, wasn’t a compromise, it was a commitment. It meant a business with no surprises. A forecast you could trust. A team that showed up with purpose and left with clarity. Customers who didn’t need to guess whether we’d deliver, we simply did. Over time, that role became just that: boring. But in the best possible way. Our numbers grew. Our customers stayed. Our projects landed where they should. And the team? We thrived. We didn’t chase drama. We built rhythm. We didn’t dazzle, we delivered.
And yet, boring rarely gets the applause. It’s the unsung hero. The invisible scaffolding that lets everything else stand tall. The thing we notice only when it’s gone.
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I thought about that recently when I switched internet providers.
For over a decade, I was a fibre customer of a local Telco. My connection never faltered, not even when others had outages. I never once called support. I didn’t think about our internet, it just worked. A quiet kind of excellence of the kind i did not fully appreciate.
Then came the temptation. A competitor dangled a shiny 10G connection, bundled with Premier League football. It sounded fast. It sounded premium. It sounded exciting.
So I switched.
And suddenly, I knew my support team by name. Zoom calls froze at the worst times. Netflix had buffering wheels that spun like silent judgment. My family started to complain, and rightly so. The 10G promise became an unpredictable mess. Kind voices on the other end of support calls couldn’t solve the problem. I was left waiting, like a traveller whose luggage is always “just about to arrive.”
And it struck me: I had traded boring for entertainingly bad.
Why is it so easy to overlook the systems that just work? The partners, the people, the products that hum along without making noise? Maybe it’s because we’ve been conditioned to crave the spectacular, the fireworks, the new. But fireworks burn fast and then it’s just smoke.
As the old Zen saying goes, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”
There’s something sacred in the mundane done well. Something powerful in the unnoticed machine that runs your life without asking for applause.
In business, in tech, in relationships, it’s easy to be seduced by scale, by sparkle, by novelty. But stability? That’s where the deep roots lie, that’s where trust grows.
So now, I find myself asking different questions.
Would I rather be impressed or at peace?
Would I rather chase intensity or build reliability?
Would I rather lead a team that looks good on paper, or one that never misses a beat?
And maybe, most importantly: what am I trading away, when I trade away boring?
Executive Leader | Professional Services, Customer Success & Transformation | Driving Strategy, Delivery & Growth
1mo100% Agree
VP, NTT DATA | Former Accenture MD | Consulting Leader in Cloud and Digital Transformation | DEI & Women in Tech Advocate | Regional Business Builder
2moVery true … broadband failures can really set you back mentally and I liked the analogy … however in a world of constraints and transformation the path to boring can be very long. . So for me the personal ambition is more of “moving the needle”….in a way that even in chaos there is communication, transparency and improvement.
Director of Professional Services - Asia | Sales Leader | P&L Management | CX & MarTech Solutions | Adobe
2moIn short term, you're as good as your intensity. But in long term, you're as good as your consistency.