🟢Green Zone Advice for 🔴red People
Why the best leadership frameworks fail when you need them most—and what actually works when your brain is offline.
There's a Harvard Business Review article going around. "Leading in the Age of Fear." It opens with a tech manager crying in a meeting. Months of AI chaos, roadmaps changing weekly, layoffs announced that morning, direct report asking if they'll have a job. She didn't have answers and the weight of pretending she did broke something.
Good opening. Honest.
Then they offer five leadership recommendations and I lost the thread a little because—okay wait, let me just say what bothered me.
The Neuroscience They Know (and Then Ignore)
The article explicitly says fear changes the brain. Acute stress. "Imagination shrivels." That's a quote. They cite neuroscience. They know what happens when leaders are terrified.
And then every recommendation requires exactly the cognitive resources fear takes away. Here is the research we used that shows the real science.
Build a policy intelligence system. Protect vision time. Run geopolitical stress tests. Create an AI doctrine. All of which needs focus, working memory, the ability to hold complexity, sustained attention. 🟢Green Zone stuff.
But the crying manager wasn't in 🟢Green Zone. She was in 🔴Red. Maybe ⚫Can't-Even. Her executive function was offline. She couldn't process what was being asked of her, let alone build cross-functional policy systems.
I Keep Seeing This
Advice designed for people at peak capacity. Given to people who are depleted. Then everyone wonders why it doesn't stick.
- Morning routines that need 90 minutes
- Meditation apps that require sustained attention
- Strategic frameworks that assume you can think strategically
The Vision Block Problem
The HBR piece recommends blocking two mornings a week for vision. Great, sure. But what happens when you get to that protected time slot after three crisis calls? You're at 🟡Yellow 6. You can't do vision. You check Slack anyway and then feel bad about it.
The advice isn't wrong. It just assumes you have resources you don't.
What Would Actually Help
Okay so—Capacity Intelligence. Which I know sounds like jargon. It's just: know where you actually are. Use tools that match that. Check if it worked.
Before Your Vision Block, Do Something Body-First
5 minutes. Otherwise your survival brain will spend those two hours on email. When you're stuck in stress response mode, logic-based planning won't engage.
If You're at 🔴Red 7, Skip the Vision Block Entirely
You won't access it. Go walk. Vision can wait. This is where understanding your actual capacity becomes critical.
Don't Announce AI Changes to Teams in Survival Mode
They can't hear nuance. They'll hear threat regardless of what you say. Effective communication requires meeting people where their nervous system actually is.
Have a 🔴Red Zone Version of Your Policy Brief
"Is this an emergency requiring action right now, yes or no." That's it. Full analysis when there's capacity for it.
The Numbers Don't Lie
I'm not saying the HBR stuff is bad. It's just incomplete. Assumes a baseline that most people don't have right now.
That's not a workforce ready for strategic frameworks. Gallop - State of the Global Workplace 2025
The Manager Who Cried
What she actually needed in that moment wasn't better systems. It was someone noticing she was at 🔴Red 9. That the meeting was requiring resources she didn't have.
Step out. Water. Three breaths. Walk. Then come back and talk roadmaps.
The crying wasn't failure. It was information. Her nervous system saying something. Question is whether anyone could read it. Including her.
The $8.8 Trillion Question
We keep doing this. 🟢Green Zone advice for 🔴Red Zone people. Then wondering why engagement keeps tanking. Why burnout keeps rising. Why the $8.8 trillion disengagement number doesn't move.
It's Not a Motivation Problem
It's capacity. We're asking depleted people to do resourced-people things. Solution isn't more advice. It's helping people access what they need to use the advice they already have.
Thermometer vs thermostat or whatever. You get it.
Start Where You Actually Are
Not where you think you should be. Not where you were last week. Where you are right now.
- The Zones Framework — Foundation of all this. 10 minutes.
- 30-Minute Reset — If you're in crisis. Free. Works at 3 AM.