It was a long day of meetings. Back-to-back sessions with our executive team. Strategy alignment with the board. A call with investors, a team update, and a final networking dinner that stretched well past dessert. I felt like I had ticked every box on the modern executive’s checklist of productivity.
I walked into the house, loosened my collar, and dropped my bag. Then I heard it: the slow, ominous gurgle from the kitchen sink.
The water was not draining.
The irony was not lost on me. After a day of aligning org charts, forecasting growth, and diagnosing operational bottlenecks, I now faced an actual, literal clog.
And the lesson came quickly. Leadership is not always about boardrooms and whiteboards. Sometimes it is about getting under the sink, understanding the mess, and doing the unglamorous work to get things flowing again.
Leadership is Plumbing
If that sounds too domestic or metaphorical, bear with me, because the parallels are surprisingly clear.
A clogged sink does not fix itself. Neither does a struggling team, a broken process, or a disengaged culture. These things require intervention. Not theoretical oversight or “strategic direction,” but firsthand, sleeves-rolled-up leadership.
In my previous piece, The Great Hiring Paradox, I talked about the tension between wanting world-class talent and offering ordinary experiences. Leaders are often baffled when great hires do not stick. What is usually backing up is not talent, it is our systems, our communication, or our culture.
You cannot lead effectively from the corner office if you have lost touch with the realities below the surface. That is why the clogged sink matters. It is a call to action: not just to fix, but to understand what broke and how to prevent it again.
Leaders often look for transformation in strategy decks and planning retreats. Real transformation is hidden in the details, the delays in boarding, the misfired communication loops, and the persistent friction between departments. Like plumbing, these issues are invisible until they are urgent. The challenge is not just to respond when they break, but to inspect proactively and fix consistently.
The Seduction of Elevation
There is a reason we fall in love with boardrooms, they are clean, ordered, and conceptual. They allow us to talk about KPIs, strategy, and culture in neat, framed discussions.
The mess, the real stuff that makes or breaks organizations, lives elsewhere; In hallway conversations, in missed Slack messages, in unreturned voicemails, or in a manager who is quietly overwhelmed but afraid to say so.
The higher we rise, the more we risk losing the ground truth. When we do lose our grasp, we tend to treat symptoms rather than causes. Pouring drain cleaner down the sink and hoping it solves the bigger issue of bad plumbing sound familiar?
That is how leadership stagnates. That is how top performers quit. That is how organizational culture rots while the dashboard shows green.
Elevation gives us perspective, but it also creates distance. If that distance is not intentionally bridged, it breeds assumptions. Leaders begin to believe the version of reality presented in meetings, polished, and curated, while the unspoken pain points of the organization continue to clog progress. The higher the altitude, the more deliberate we must be in descending into the trenches.
First-Circle Feedback
After fixing the sink (with a plunger, not a PowerPoint), I texted a few trusted peers, my first-circle network. We laughed, swapped stories, and then got to talk about how often real leadership lessons come from inconvenience, the firsthand experiences that resonate because they are life.
Your first-circle network is a vital counterbalance to executive insulation. They remind you who you are when you are not on stage, telling you the truth and calling out your blind spots.
You need these people like your house needs working plumbing: quiet, dependable, and essential. You do not always see the pipes, but everything depends on them.
These relationships are not just support systems; they are accountability systems. First-circle peers challenge your assumptions, reality-check your frustrations, and sharpen your instincts. In a role that can feel increasingly solitary at the top, this circle becomes not just helpful, but vital for sustained leadership health and growth.
If you have not curated that inner circle intentionally, start now. Leadership is too complex, and the margin for error too thin, to navigate in isolation.
Leading Where the Clogs Are
In The Great Talent Paradox, I challenged companies to fix the experience, not just the pitch. This principle applies everywhere. Whether it is onboarding, culture, operations, or strategy, the work is always in the clogs.
Here are five areas where executive leaders need to stop hovering in the boardroom and start plunging:
- Communication Flow
Ask your teams what is blocking the flow of information. Where is the alignment breaking down? Are there cross-functional bottlenecks that keep surfacing but aren’t being addressed? Most communication issues are not about tools. They are about trust, clarity, and habits.
Information should flow across an organization like clean water. If it does not, productivity suffers and silos form. Leaders must not only audit the tools but also reinforce the behaviors that ensure messages are heard and understood. - Decision-Making Latency
Is your organization waiting on approvals that never come? Are your managers empowered to act or constantly rerouting to the top? Every delay is clogging. Fix the process or delegate the decision.
Decision-making speed reflects trust and clarity. Latency signals a lack of both. Leaders must inspect where authority has bottlenecked and reallocate it to empower real-time movement closer to the point of need. - Culture and Burnout
The most toxic problems do not scream. They simmer. Pay attention to signs of disengagement. If people are “quiet quitting,” what is the real clog? Lack of purpose? Poor leadership? Inflexible policies?
Burnout is not just about volume of work; it is about the value of work. Do people understand why their contribution matters? Do they see a future in the company? Leaders must get below the surface and engage directly, listening to the unspoken signals of emotional and cultural fatigue. - Performance Feedback
Do your employees know where they stand? Or are you relying on annual reviews to deliver what should be weekly clarity? Unclear expectations are like food scraps down the drain. Eventually, they back up everything.
Frequent feedback is the routine maintenance of people’s leadership. Skip it, and resentment builds. Offer it consistently, and you build alignment, trust, and accountability. Make it a conversation, not a report card. - Customer Pain Points
When is the last time you called your own service line or sat through a customer experience review without filters? Your front line knows where the clogs are. Listen to them before the backup hits your brand.
The customer experience is a mirror of internal systems. If it feels slow, confusing, or unresponsive, chances are those issues are rooted in internal breakdowns. Spend time in the shoes of the customer and the employee, they know the plumbing better than anyone.
Humility in the Toolshed
Being a leader does not mean you need to fix everything yourself, but it does mean you need to care enough to understand what is broken. Am I willing to get uncomfortable?
There is a humility in acknowledging the mess. Whether it is a backed-up hiring pipeline, misaligned incentives, or literal kitchen chaos, you earn credibility not by staying clean but by showing up and getting your hands dirty when it counts.
When I mentor rising leaders, I always say:
Do not just manage your team, understand their environment.
Do not just direct change, experience the friction.
Do not just celebrate success, inspect the plumbing that made it possible.
Leadership is not a display of perfection. It is a practice of presence.
From Tactical to Transformational
Let’s bring this full circle.
Fixing a sink is a tactical move and noticing the cause of the clog, evaluating the entire system, and deciding whether to rework the plumbing is transformational.
Same with leadership. You can jump in for the quick win, or you can step back and say: what does this tell me about how we operate? About how I show up? About where the significant reside?
This is not about micromanagement, it is about intentional presence, strategic empathy, and curious leadership.
Transformation comes not from reacting to messes, but from building systems that make them less likely to occur. The best leaders do not just act, they design.
Final Drain Check
Leadership is not just what you present, it is what you fix. It is what you are willing to face when the day does not go as planned.
So, here is my challenge: What is your sink today?
What is gurgling under the surface while you sit in your boardroom?
Ignoring the issues will not make them go away. Facing them might just make you a better leader.
Chris Franz is a financial executive and leadership strategist with experience spanning high-growth startups, mid-market companies, and large enterprise transformations. He currently serves on the advisory boards of several networking organizations.
Thank you for writing and sharing this. I liked it. Steve Kovich
Thanks for reading.
This is a timeless piece that is very well written.