Getting rid of "Try Harder" Culture

*Why "Try Harder" Is the Most Expensive Culture a Scaling Operation Can Have* "Push through." "Dig deeper." "Give 110% this quarter." It feels like leadership when your team is stretched and the goals are big. But the research is clear: the harder a team works for prolonged periods, the more errors they make. In this episode, Sarah Wilson and Penny Cook unpack why heroic effort is a sign of a poorly designed system — not commitment — and give you three practical moves to start dismantling try-harder culture in your business. What we cover: → How to spot it: The two-week pressure test. Pick any process that's running well. If the person who runs it took two weeks off with no warning, would it break? If yes, you've got a problem — not a hero. → Firefighters vs. system builders: Why some of your most "dedicated" people are actually the corporate arsonists setting the fires they rush in to put out, and how to redirect that energy into building systems. → Reframe errors as system signals, not effort problems: When something breaks, the question isn't "who messed up?" It's "what in our system allowed this to happen?" Penny shares the story of the engineer who took down the network — and why firing him would have been the wrong call. → Design for 80%, not 110%: Why building your operations around a sustainable pace isn't a perk or a soft choice — it's smarter business that actually gets you closer to 100% effort. The teams that scale cleanly aren't the ones working the hardest. They're the ones whose systems do the heavy lifting, so people are free to think. Got feelings about the 80% rule? We want to hear them — drop us a comment. Find us on LinkedIn or at Operating on Purpose. We'd love to talk, debate, and help your organization. Because great businesses don't just happen — they operate on purpose.