Built to Burn (Why Work Burns People Out and How the Best Leaders Build Cultures That Don't)

Burnout is a leadership problem, not a people problem — and the solution is in your hands

The economic cost of employee exhaustion, disengagement and despair impacts the global economy by as much as $10 trillion every year. In the face of this mass burnout, simple wellness programs are struggling to make a difference. Built to Burn exposes the uncomfortable truth: Burnout is a matter of culture, not a personal failure. And leaders need to redesign the conditions that ignite this fire.

Built to Burn shares clear, deep insights into why wellbeing and productivity are both suffering under current models of work. Drawing on neuroscience, organisational psychology and 25+ years of consulting, Karl Treacher shows how to rethink the goals and culture of the modern workplace. The best leaders drive extraordinary performance while protecting the people who produce it. With the tools in this book, you’ll learn how to build solutions that lead to healthier, happier, higher-performing teams.

You’ll discover:

• why psychosocial safety is now a legal obligation in Australia, the UK and the EU, and what that means for how you lead
• why the manager, not the wellness program, is the single biggest predictor of whether your team burns out or thrives
• how always-on digital culture fuels the burnout epidemic and chronic workplace stress physically changes the brain
• a 90-day action plan for building a culture where high performance and wellbeing reinforce each other.

Built to Burn is a call to action for anyone who manages people: Stop treating the symptoms, and start redesigning the system. Whether you lead a global enterprise or a team of five, the choices you make about work culture shape the health, performance and lives of every person in your care.