Reactive vs. Strategic Mode: A Survival Guide for Busy Leaders
In my blog post “The Availability Trap,” I wrote about how the constant state of reactivity plagues modern knowledge workers. The same tools that enable seamless collaboration across time zones—Slack, email, calendar invites—have created an expectation of perpetual accessibility. This isn’t just about interruptions; it’s about the cognitive toll of being always interruptible.
For leaders, this challenge is amplified tenfold. The pressure to be present for everyone at all times has created a leadership crisis where many CTOs and engineering leaders find themselves trapped in a cycle of reactive management, unable to carve out the strategic thinking time their roles demand.
Many leaders respond to this challenge by choosing one of the extremes. Some attempt to maintain constant availability, wearing their “always online” status as a badge of honor. Others go the opposite route, becoming almost completely unavailable, justifying it as “protecting their time.” Both approaches fail to address the nuanced reality of modern tech leadership.
The real solution isn’t about choosing between being available or unavailable - it’s about being intentional about when you are each.
Many leaders assume availability is non-negotiable, especially in early-stage companies where juggling strategy and execution feels unavoidable. But this mindset often persists long after teams have scaled—creating a dangerous dependency.
This is where Strategic Toggling comes in—a deliberate rhythm of alternating between two modes of leadership. This isn’t about finding a middle ground; it’s about consciously switching between two distinct modes of operation.
In Reactive Mode, you’re fully present and available for specific, high-value interactions. This includes being there for critical technical decisions where architectural choices could have long-lasting impact, showing up for learning moments where your experience can help teams avoid costly mistakes, and responding to true emergencies (not just urgent requests masquerading as emergencies).
Strategic Mode, on the other hand, is when you deliberately make yourself unavailable to focus on work that requires deep thought and concentration. This includes protecting time for business strategy development, market analysis, and the future of your organisation. It’s in these focused periods that you can work on the business rather than in it. This mode also includes intentional recovery periods - because sustainable leadership requires managing your energy, not just your time.
At Baby Journey, Strategic Toggling worked because we paired clear boundaries with mutual trust. For example, teams were empowered to decide whether to act immediately on issues affecting our users users, while I trusted their judgment to escalate only critical problems (those impacting >10% of users). Over time, this created a resilient organization where problems were solved at the right level—not just the loudest—and where my availability became a strategic resource, not a bottleneck.
The impact of Strategic Toggling extends far beyond personal productivity, though. Your availability patterns become the unspoken standard for your entire organization. When you demonstrate that it’s not only acceptable but necessary to be unavailable at times to do deep work, you create permission for others to do the same. Teams become more resourceful when they know they can’t (and aren't expected to!) always rely on immediate leadership input.
For anyone who wants to get started with setting up their own system for Strategic Toggling, the first thing I would recommend is to measure your time. As Peter Drucker famously said, ‘What gets measured gets managed’, install a tool like Harvest to track how your time is spent on different types of work. After that, identify one key area that you know will move the needle long term. This becomes your main KPI to track as you start making changes.
I do this for myself. I track focused coding hours, coaching hours and hours spent writing my newsletter. These are the three most important areas of my life right now. While measuring focus and availability isn’t straightforward, I’ve found that time tracking serves as a valuable proxy metric.
It’s important to note that this isn’t about optimizing every minute; it’s about ensuring your most important work gets adequate attention. If you’re not spending enough time on strategic work, no amount of availability optimization will make up for that deficit.
So, here is a question for you to ponder as you head on into the weekend:
What could your team achieve if you weren’t their first line of defense?
Until next time, Viktor
Curious to learn how you and your engineering organization can focus and availability? I offer 1-to-1 coaching and hands-on workshops (both onsite and remote) where you and your teams learn to:
- Design sustainable deep work systems
- Create effective escalation protocols
- Build team habits that protect both focus and collaboration
- Set up communication frameworks that reduce noise while maintaining alignment
Schedule a free discovery call using THIS LINK or simply reply to this email to get started.
