When a Staff Sergeant's Wisdom Changed Everything
Picture this: You're a young British Army lieutenant in the Iraqi desert during Gulf War II. You're exhausted, running on fumes, convinced you need to be the perfect officer—super fit, awake longer than everyone else, with all the answers at your fingertips. Then your staff sergeant, a veteran with 15 years of experience, pulls you aside.
"Sir, with all due respect," he says, "your job is to make the decisions. Our job is to give you the information."
For Jimmy Burroughes, that moment was a revelation that would shape not just his military career, but his entire approach to leadership—and ultimately, his mission to help thousands of leaders worldwide reclaim their time, energy, and strategic focus.
The Accidental Warrior
Jimmy didn't set out to become a military officer. With a degree in tropical medicine, he was still figuring out his professional direction when the military called. Having enjoyed his time in the Officer Training Corps at university, he thought it would be "a great way to see the world, do lots of adventure training, have lots of dinner nights, make lots of friends."
"There was nothing really going on in the world when I joined up," Jimmy recalls with a wry smile. "And by the end of my training, we were in the midst of the Second Gulf War."
His first assignment? Leading soldiers in what he describes as "essentially a supermarket on demand in the middle of the desert"—coordinating military logistics in Kuwait and Iraq. Those six years would prove transformative, teaching him lessons about leadership, resilience, and what it truly means to operate under pressure.
The Expert Trap: Why Great Individual Contributors Struggle as Leaders
The lesson from Staff Sergeant Dobbs cut through Jimmy's beliefs about leadership like a knife. He was holding onto a dangerous misconception that many high-performers carry with them as they advance: the belief that you need to be the expert in everything.
"It works when you're an individual contributor, and it kind of works when you're a manager," Jimmy explains, "but when you move into managing managers and leadership roles, it doesn't work anymore. Actually, it's one of the quickest routes to burnout—you being at the center of everything."
This realization became the foundation of Jimmy's work today. Now, as a Fortune 500 leadership expert and developer of the "Simplify to Amplify" methodology, he's transformed over 3,000 leaders across 20+ countries. His clients include some of the world's largest enterprises—Bank of America, Bank of New Zealand, and many others.
But at its core, his message is beautifully simple: Your job as a leader is to make decisions, not to have all the answers.
What Resilience Really Means: It's Not About Bending—It's About Removing the Weight
When we think of resilience, we often imagine bending under pressure, bouncing back, or toughing it out. But Jimmy's approach is fundamentally different. True resilience, he argues, isn't about becoming stronger to carry more weight—it's about removing the unnecessary weight entirely.
"Leaders don't need more resilience training to carry more load," Jimmy says. "They need operational friction removal to reduce the load in the first place."
This philosophy is captured in what he calls "operational friction"—all the unnecessary complexity, unclear expectations, duplicate work, and inefficient processes that drain leaders of time and energy. By systematically identifying and eliminating these friction points, leaders don't just survive; they amplify their performance by an average of 47% in just 90 days.
It's resilience through intelligent simplification, not through gritting your teeth harder.
The Five Operational Frictions That Drain 6+ Hours Weekly
Through his work with thousands of leaders, Jimmy has identified five core operational frictions that consistently rob managers of managers of valuable time:
By systematically addressing these five areas, Jimmy helps senior leaders reclaim 6+ hours per week—time that can be redirected toward strategic thinking, team development, and the high-value work that actually moves the needle.
The Calendar is Your Life: Designing Days Around Energy, Not Time
One of the most practical pieces of wisdom Jimmy shares is how to structure your day for maximum effectiveness. The key? Plan your day around your energy, not your time.
"Tackle the hard tasks when you're clear and agile," Jimmy advises. "Leave the administrative tasks or the basic tasks till you've got a little bit less energy."
He recommends allocating two 90-minute or three 60-minute deep work windows—and here's the critical part—before you even turn your emails on. Get that important strategic work done first, when your mind is fresh and focused.
"When you're feeling really overloaded, everything feels out of control," Jimmy acknowledges. But by taking control of your calendar and protecting time for deep work, you create islands of clarity in the chaos.
The HEART Principle: Help as an Antidote to Overwhelm
When I asked Jimmy what advice he'd give to someone feeling overwhelmed right now—whether by work, health challenges, or just life—his answer was both surprising and profound.
"The first piece of friction that you can control is asking for or giving help," he says.
He teaches a mnemonic called HEART, where the H stands for Help. But here's where it gets interesting: help works in both directions.
Asking for Help
"A problem shared is a problem halved. You get a second perspective, you get a sounding board. And often, when you're in the middle of it, you can't see it."
There's wisdom in recognizing that we all have blind spots, especially when we're overwhelmed. It's easy to coach someone else on their problems, but incredibly difficult to see our own clearly. Asking for help isn't weakness—it's strategic clarity.
Giving Help
But perhaps even more powerful is the act of giving help when you're struggling yourself.
"There's this beautiful neurochemical pattern that happens when you're giving help to people," Jimmy explains. "When you're volunteering, when you're being charitable, when you're helping somebody else walk the dog, when you're helping a child learn—it creates this incredible oxytocin response, which is the connecting and loving chemical. It also creates a beautiful dopamine and serotonin response...