Metamorphosis™ Leadership Newsletter

Welcome to the Metamorphosis™ Leadership Newsletter: your briefing on the mindsets, systems, and habits that turn managers into transformative leaders.

Each edition connects real-world stories to practical moves you can run inside your business, so you can build capability that compounds instead of burning people out.

I’m Alan Nehemy, Founder & CEO of Metamorphosis Worldwide™, in partnership with Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth. Our mission is to improve lives by reshaping people’s relationship with work, so their lives gain more meaning and the companies they power thrive.

Connect with me on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/alannehemy

Feature Article

Leadership and Ultramarathons

A Reflection

Maybe we all remember the first time we got promoted into a management position. Initially it feels great, maybe a bit intimidating, but we knew deep down that we deserved it, that we had been carrying the team all along anyhow, now we finally get recognized for it.

I feel that most of us have heard the line that management is a marathon and not a sprint. I never quite agreed with that. A marathon still allows some brute force. We can keep going on stubbornness alone and finish in a few hours. Managing a business is different. It feels more like running four marathons back to back, through terrain you have never seen, while the weather keeps changing and the finish line keeps moving. If someone had framed it that way from the beginning, I believe many of us would have approached our jobs very differently.

When I transitioned from CrossFit and Spartan races to ultrarunning, I came face to face with this reality. I had always been drawn to hard things, but ultrarunning required a different kind of discipline that took me years to develop. Not the discipline of pushing, but the discipline of understanding systems. Training phases, what fuel is best for you and how much salt intake, water loss, heart rate, what to wear and when, all of which depend on weather. Going for a run because it’s on the schedule, whether or not it’s hot or cold, if you feel like it or not. you go because it’s the plan. We have tnjuries that teach us about our own mechanics. It demanded a focus I did not have before. It required me to understand what I was doing and why, not just that I could push myself through anything.

We talk in the ultra runners circles about having a strong “why” for doing the race.

That same lesson showed up again in my career. I had been working as an IT Manager for a couple of years when I was promoted to Director, but not of IT. Suddenly I was responsible for IT, QHSE and Facilities. Besides IT, these departments came with almost no staff and a mountain of inherited work: a $2M construction project about to start without half the scope engineered, an upcoming $9M construction project, a 100,000 sqft manufacturing facility to run safely, on top of a changing IT landscape due to a recent acquisition and need to merge infrastructures.

There was no pushing through this. There was no version of myself, or anyone, that could do the work of four departments as a technician hero. I had to build systems. I had to operate differently. I had to accept that my job was no longer about getting things done, but about designing the way things would get done.

People often think leadership is about personal heroics. But true authority comes from understanding how things actually work. In ultrarunning that means knowing why you fuel the way you do or when you walk the steep climbs so you do not overload your body for hours later. In management it means knowing when a process is failing or when a team is burning out, and not making yourself the hero who fixes everything. It is about designing the structure that allows the work to happen without you breaking yourself in the process.

All of this became very real again this past weekend during my 100K race called Looking Glass. It was a qualifier for my 100 miler next year, called Hellbender, my goal since I started ultra running 5 years ago. I started strong, felt good, and dealt with the typical issues. A ripped bag. Safety pins. Adapt and overcome, I thought. Then around mile 30 the pain in my right knee started building. I kept running, met my crew at mile 33, I was discouraged, emotional and tired. Everything hurt. I had trouble seeing any positive in the situation. I told them to set a timer for 10 minutes that would be when I would leave for the next stop, 8 miles uphill on a gravel road – so it depended on a system, not on how I felt. I had other pains up to that point that went away, so I expected the pain to go away too.

I also knew this was part of the deal. Every ultrarunner hits a point where nothing feels good. You keep going anyway and you focus on the next stop, not the finish. The problem was that the pain kept increasing. I adjusted, tested, removed the knee sleeve (got some relief, I learned later that it had been burning my skin from rubbing), tried different approaches on how to run, but nothing solved the issue. As I climbed toward the next aid station I had to make a choice: was this the pain I should push through, or the pain that would take me out for months if I kept pushing it?

When I reached the top, the race director for Hellbender happened to be there. We talked. She reminded me that I could still qualify by running a self-paced race of enough distance on my own with enough elevation. I did not need to finish this race. In that moment I realized the right decision. The smart decision was to stop. Protect the long-term goal. Stay healthy. Not destroy myself trying to complete something that could hurt me for the rest of my life. So I stopped.

People misunderstand burnout in corporate life. They think it is about being tired. Burnout is what happens when you keep pushing through pain that should tell you to stop. It is what happens when you forget that longevity matters more than heroics. Nobody else is responsible for protecting your capacity. Only YOU are.

And this is where the connection to management becomes clear. Leaders who endure are leaders who understand the system they are operating inside. In ultrarunning, that system is your training, your fueling, your body, and the plan you designed. In management, that system is the process you create, the documentation that guides others, the feedback loops that make the work better, and the structure that keeps your team aligned and your, and theirs, workload under control.

This is exactly why I am launching the Metamorphosis Manager Accelerator©. It gives managers the clarity they never received when they were promoted, but more importantly, it gives them the systems and tools that actually change how they work every day.

Here is what we focus on:

• Essential leadership skills, like how to delegate with intention and how to give meaningful feedback that does not create resistance.
• How to run, document, and follow up on 1:1 meetings so both the manager and the employee stay aligned.
• How to understand where their time is going, and how to protect their energy. Most managers believe they have “no time,” yet they work 50 hours per week and still feel behind. We fix that.
• How to design clear, functional processes, as we co-design some of the core processes together.
• How to write SOPs that are actually usable, so people know exactly what to do and how the work flows.
• How to create practical feedback loops that keep processes improving instead of deteriorating.
• And most importantly, how to use AI and modern IT tools so the system runs with them, not against them. We configure Outlook to automatically categorize and prioritize their emails. We set up Teams or Slack in ways that reduce noise instead of adding to it. We integrate Planner/Trello so tasks flow cleanly from communication into execution.

In other words, the program is not theory. It is hands-on configuration, real process building, and leadership skills that support the system rather than replace it.

In 90 days we install a Management System. Your managers leave with transformed capability, and the investment is significantly lower than the efficiency losses you are already carrying. Research shows that over 60% of managers feel overwhelmed and spend the majority of their time reacting instead of leading. That loss shows up in delays, rework, turnover, and burnout. The cost is already there. We simply redirect it into capability.

Michael and I call this type of manager the Manager Entrepreneur©.

The one who treats their department like a business inside the business.
The one who builds the system that carries the work forward.
The one who creates space for growth instead of burnout.
The one who becomes part of a group of people committed to working in a smarter, healthier, more sustainable way.

That is what we want for every organization. And it is what this world needs right now.

If you want to explore how this system could support your leadership team, or if you are looking to equip your managers with the structure they need to perform at a higher level, reach out. I am always happy to talk.

Alan.Nehemy@MetamorphosisWorldwide.com

Where we lead with rhythm, not rank, because everyone deserves to be great.