Why Service Sucks in Quiet Restaurants, and Your Star Employee Loses It When the Pressure is Off

Last weekend, I sat down with the boys to watch the Springboks finish their unbeaten tour against Wales. It should’ve carried that electric, knife-edge energy you expect from a test match. Instead, it played out like a dominant training run. The boys quickly decided to skip it and go build an unsanctioned house for what they believed to be a homeless man outside the pub (he was really just a patron with a nicotine habit), and I watched it – kind of.

It was, to be honest, not compelling. The Boks were simply too strong. Wales too depleted. And apart from the now familiar red card cameo, where a lock of ours gets sent off, there was almost no real tension. No sense of jeopardy. No “anything could happen here.” Except for Eben Etzebeth… ai tog. Maybe it was that end-of-year fatigue we’re all feeling that caused him to lose his cool.

There’s something here, I thought: without the right tension, even brilliance becomes flat.

It reminded me of the restaurant phenomenon I’ve seen a hundred times. Walk into a quiet restaurant and service is slow, inattentive, oddly passive. Walk into a packed one and the place hums. Orders fly. Staff move with intent. Things happen because they have to.

Or a client who had a really competent employee. Said employee, though, would only thrive under stress. When things got quiet, the productivity nosedived. It was a bad look… the more he put in place systems that alleviated pressure, the less he could rely on her.

It’s the paradox of performance: Plenty of time kills urgency, while scarcity sharpens it. Zero tension equals zero spark. The best Bok games this year were the ones where you could feel the stakes rising: 14 men against France. Ireland’s physical arm-wrestle. The Eden Park record defence, the big victory that turned on a dime a week later. Even that All Blacks match had tension baked in early before the scoreboard ran away.

Sport needs tension… Leaders need tension. Creativity needs tension! And without tension, the devil's work sits in the idle hands.

But, and this is the part most people miss: tension without preparation becomes chaos. Preparation without tension becomes complacency. The sweet spot is the collision between the two. Ask any country that’s ever entered into a silly war. Gotta get those troops moving, right?

In the last month of client work, the biggest leaps I’ve seen have come from people who got intentional about tension. Teams that stopped waiting for stress to arrive and instead designed the right kind of pressure.

• We set in motion a process to tighten accountability for a client by focusing on meeting cadence, zeroed in on weekly priorities.

• We launched EOS for another, and the associated focus on rocks and issues.

• We became intentional about the real question: Where and how are we going to hit those revenue markers, and are we putting in place the systems for them?

And above all engagements, we carved out space to prepare properly so the pressure would enhance performance instead of overwhelming it.

It’s the same logic that Covey built into the Eisenhower Matrix:

Quadrant 2 – Important but Not Urgent – is where preparation happens.

Quadrant 1 – Important and Urgent – is where healthy tension lives.

When you live only in Q1, you burn out. When you avoid Q1 entirely, you drift. When you invest in Q2, you can operate in Q1 with clarity, speed, and creativity.

The right preparation unlocks the right tension…and the right tension pulls out your best work. And examples are everywhere.

In sport, the Boks don’t play their best when the opposition rolls over. They thrive when they’ve prepared deeply (Q2 work) so they can handle the ferocity of the moment (Q1 tension). Think of the 2023 knockouts: tension everywhere, but grounded in months of conditioning and scenario readiness. With France, with Ireland, they rose to the tension because they had the right playbooks ready.

In movies, every great heist film follows the Eisenhower Matrix perfectly. Ocean’s Eleven: long, deliberate Q2 planning; then the high-tension execution window where everything clicks because the groundwork was immaculate. Remove the planning, and the tension becomes panic. Plus, George Clooney is just too cool.

In business, companies like Amazon use preparation to fuel tension. The famous “six-page narrative” isn’t busywork – it’s Q2 investment. It allows meetings to run with the crisp tension of Q1 without descending into noise. Bezos’ rule: decisions get better when tension and clarity co-exist. And everyone needs to be up to speed.

For me, all the EOS/Scaling Up stuff that I use to help companies scale comes back to the 4DX (Four Disciplines of Execution). Discipline 1 and 2 – focus and lead measures – are preparation. Discipline 3 – scoreboards –is tension. Discipline 4 – cadence – is where the two meet. The right level of accountability and tension applied consistently.

Some tension is destructive. But designed tension is catalytic.

PG’s Pro Tip:

If you want the right tension this week – creative, productive, forward-moving – set it up with the Eisenhower Matrix.

Here’s how:

1. Do one piece of Q2 preparation every morning. Something small but structural: planning, clarifying, designing, rehearsing. This is your “prime the system” move.

2. Create a narrow Q1 window in your week. Choose one task and give it a clear, non-negotiable deadline. Tension works when it’s specific, not ambient.

3. Eliminate one fake Q1 (urgent-but-not-important) distraction.Remove the tension that drains rather than sharpens: reactive WhatsApps, low-value meetings, emotional admin.

AI Prompt for Execution:

“Using Covey’s Eisenhower Matrix, analyse my current week. Identify where I’m missing Q2 preparation, where I have unnecessary Q1 chaos, and suggest three structural adjustments to create healthy, productive tension that boosts focus, creativity, and output.”

The Springboks reminded me again this week: without tension, the winning condition isn’t met. Runaway wins against inferior opposition are fine, but what really gets the blood boiling is an unstoppable excellence in the face of adversity. The same holds for any leader, any business, any day worth waking up for.