The Morning Download: Finding Balance When the Load Breaks You

Good morning and welcome to The WSJ Leadership Institute’s new series about executive resilience—and a special Saturday edition of the Morning Download.

A quick word from the Institute’s Gwendolyn (Wendy) Bounds, SVP, editor and host of WSJ Executive Resilience and author of the book “Not Too Late.”

Hello! This is our second newsletter, and we loved the feedback and strong response from the first. Keep it coming.

In this occasional series, we’re learning from top executives how they make physical and cognitive resilience a critical component of strong leadership. Our goal is to provide newsletter subscribers and council members with actionable strategies and inspiration to live and lead better, longer.

For anyone who’s ever let work override prioritizing their health, my colleague Isabelle’s profile today of Bank of America CTO Hari Gopalkrishnan will strike a chord.

A few parts that hit home with me from a health and leadership POV:

• Don’t let a flame become a fire: “Niggles” in athletics are low-level bodily discomforts that can be minor—or a precursor to something serious. Same goes for minor issues at work, whether it’s a talented team member who’s rubbing co-workers the wrong way or a billing glitch impacting a few (for now) customers. With calendars groaning from commitments, niggles are easy to dismiss. But we do so at our peril, physically or professionally.
• Sitting is professional kryptonite: Americans are sedentary 7 to 10 hours a day, and those of us in corporate jobs are among the worst offenders—particularly with sitting. One reason I took up competitive athletics in midlife was to offset the ravages of sitting and screens, which can lead to chronic disease and musculoskeletal problems. Data suggest getting up every 30 minutes, even to simply stand behind your chair in a meeting and stretch, reduces risk.
• Identity flexibility is imperative for long-term leadership: When at the top of your profession, the demands quickly can dominate your identity. To “step away and just do something different” as Gopalkrishnan eloquently puts it, gives us a cognitive cushion that’s critical for recovery.

To explore these ideas more—and learn some stretches to offset sitting—check out the links following Isabelle’s story.

Have a leader to suggest for a profile? Or an expert you’d like us to interview at a Summit? Email me at ExecutiveResilience@wsj.com. We’ll be rolling out new content and features in the months to come. And welcome to our community.

— Wendy

It started with a niggle. No dramatic fall or sprain. Just a little discomfort in his lower back that was all too easy to dismiss, said Bank of America Chief Technology and Information Officer Hari Gopalkrishnan.

And he did dismiss it. Gopalkrishnan kept playing tennis with friends and cricket in a local league, and, like much of corporate America, spent hours a day chained to his office desk chair.

The pain got worse. Then, even after a year of physical therapy, targeted stretching and epidural shots, that niggle had become an excruciatingly debilitating herniated disc. Not so easy to ignore. Gopalkrishnan said he never felt like open back surgery was something he’d have to do—until it was.

“I should’ve taken it easier. I didn’t. I paid the price,” Gopalkrishnan told me.

For high-achieving corporate executives like Gopalkrishan, who oversees Bank of America’s $13.5 billion tech budget and a team of more than 60,000 people, finding the resilience and discipline to push through pain and challenges can come naturally. Sometimes what’s harder is finding the discipline to know when to pull back. Gopalkrishnan learned that lesson the hard way.

But the recovery process taught Gopalkrishnan a new type of discipline: slowing down and finding balance.

“You have to make a new set of habits,” he said. After four weeks, he was able to get back on a stationary bike. After 12 weeks, light strength training.

“I’d actually visualize the calendar in my mind that said: Give another buffer of six weeks before you try stuff like tennis.” He added, “Literally I’ve never followed something so closely to a T.”

A little over a year later, Gopalkrishnan is ready for his comeback season of cricket, but he’s thinking about everything a little bit differently, from the way he protects his back to how he manages his teams at work, and, critically, how much time he spends sitting.

“One of the things my physical therapist said to me was that the biggest influx of people he sees now are people who have desk jobs. It's just people who are sitting all day long.”

It’s harder in a world of back-to-back virtual meetings, but we have to remember to stand up regularly, he said. And that’s not just to protect ourselves physically, but cognitively as well, he said. We need breaks.

“So much of our work, I'm sitting here in a suit, in the chair. [Sports are about] being able to sort of step away and just do something different, be engaged with different types of people who aren't talking about AI.” (This tech reporter can wholeheartedly relate.)

As a leader, Gopalkrishnan said he’s developed a new sense of empathy. He remembers standing up to give presentations and hiding his extreme back pain, but “if you had asked most people who saw me, they wouldn't even know I was struggling,” he said.

Now he reminds himself, if someone on his team screws up or misses a deadline, “you don't start with the assumption they're lazy. You ask the question, how are you doing?”

Gopalkrishnan’s biggest learning from the experience? “If you don’t take care of yourself physically, or you don’t take care of yourself mentally, then at some point, the load you carry breaks you.”

Identity flexibility: Why ‘All In’ Is No Recipe for Success - WSJ

Ignoring small problems: The Problem With Saying “Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions”

Sitting fixes: The Sitting Fix—Two Percent With Michael Easter (Paywall removed for one week for WSJ Executive Resilience readers.)

In our inaugural Executive Resilience profile, I sat down with Peloton Chief Technology Officer Francis Shanahan to talk about his preparation for the brutal 250-mile Cocodona ultramarathon.

Last week he reached out to let me know that—triumphant and tired—he crossed the finish line in Flagstaff at 10 p.m. on Friday, May 8. It was 113 hours after he started.

This year, a handful of changes to the course, including the addition of the notorious “Hangover Trail,” made things tougher than ever, he said. What got him through this time? Yes, it was the physical strength. Yes, it was the mental strength. But more than anything, it was the emotional lift he got from the other runners he met on the trail.

“Her family basically adopted me and cheered me on the entire rest of the race including all the way through the finish line,” he said. “I hope this helps explain a little bit of the magic of these events.”

Follow Isabelle Bousquette on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and TikTok for more behind the scenes on her tech and AI coverage, and lately, her contributions to The WSJ Leadership Institute's new Executive Resilience series, where she's profiling America's top execs about their fitness and wellness habits.

Follow Belle Lin on LinkedIn and X for her latest reporting on enterprise technology and AI.

Steven Rosenbush is chief of the enterprise technology bureau at The WSJ Leadership Institute. He also has a column. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Tom Loftus is the editor of the Morning Download. He suggests following Isabelle, Belle and Steve on their various social channels. But if you insist, here's his LinkedIn.