The Capacity Collapse: Why Organizations Must Rethink How They Support Their People

Ever heard the saying “you can’t pour from an empty cup”?

This well-known saying highlights that “you must take care of yourself before you can give to others.”

But what happens when everyone’s cup is empty?

What happens when everyone becomes so depleted that they have no more to give?

In today’s workplaces, many leaders are asking:

• Why does everything feel so hard?
• Why aren’t people bouncing back the way they used to?
• Why are even top performers withdrawing, burning out, or disengaging?

It’s not just workload.

It’s not just change fatigue.

It’s not just poor communication.

It’s a collective capacity collapse.

What is Capacity Collapse?

Capacity is the difference between what we are currently being (thinking, feeling, and behaving) and what is currently possible for us to be being (thinking, feeling, behaving). Capacity is what we have left to still give, use, or apply in our work and lives.

Ever seen the “big jar” demonstration where you must fit all the rocks, pebbles, sand, and water (each representing aspects of your life) into one jar? The rocks represent the most important parts of your life (family, career, faith), the pebbles are big projects or activities (sports practice, home renovation, work project), the sand is basic survival (eating, sleeping, etc.), and water is the stress caused by everything in our lives.

The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate the importance of how we structure and prioritize things most efficiently and effectively to fit it all into your life (jar).

When we do it optimally, the big rocks go in first, then pebbles, then the sand, and finally, the water. The message being, we can fit more in our jar when we put things into it in the most efficient and effective order.

But believe me when I tell you, no matter how you rearrange the jar, if there is too much water (stress), it will always overflow.

When our lives are full and especially filled with too much stress, we run out of capacity. When our jar overflows with stress, ultimately, we end up in burnout or capacity collapse.

Our lives have become too complex and stressful for our bodies to adequately adapt to their environment. As a result, the world we’ve created for ourselves asks more of us as humans than we currently have the capacity to deliver.

In other words, to thrive in today’s world, we need a bigger jar!

In the past, high performance was a function of capabilities and competence.

Today, it’s a function of something far more fragile: capacity.

Across organizations everywhere, we’re seeing a silent pattern: exhausted leaders trying to motivate exhausted teams inside exhausted systems.

Everyone cares.

Everyone is trying.

But trying harder isn’t working anymore.

Because the problem isn’t effort — it’s capacity.

We are living through a capacity collapse — and most organizations are still pretending they can out-strategize it (with outdated approaches that just don’t work in today’s world).

And this assumes they’re even willing to acknowledge its existence at all. Many organizations are too busy pointing fingers at whose fault it is that they ended up here to recognize they are in a capacity collapse. (Ironically, this is also a sure-fire sign that they are experiencing it!)

The Invisible Crisis Inside Today’s Workplaces

Ask any leader privately, and they’ll admit it:

• Their teams feel different — heavier, more brittle.
• Motivation flickers. Conflict surfaces faster.
• Brilliant people are disengaging or quietly quitting.
• Resilience is no longer a given — it’s a daily gamble.

This isn’t about a “soft skills gap” or a need for another motivational program.

It’s about a fundamental human truth:

You cannot expect sustainable performance from people operating on empty.

Today’s workforce isn’t just stressed.

They are depleted, dysregulated, disconnected, and disillusioned.

• You can’t pour from an empty cup.
• You can’t build innovation on exhausted minds.
• You can’t drive loyalty in survival mode.

Yet, the demands keep rising — faster deadlines, constant pivots, growing complexity — while the human capacity to absorb, adapt, and accomplish continues to shrink.

I’m not speaking in hypotheticals here. I’m speaking directly based on my own experience, that of my clients, and the extensive research that supports this phenomenon.

It’s not addressing what is going to or about to happen in the future; this is happening right now. You are either conscious and aware of it or not.

Which brings me to the first challenge. Before we can even consider addressing and responding to the capacity collapse, we have to be willing to become aware of and conscious of its existence. We can’t bury our heads in the sand and hope what’s worked in the past will work in today’s world.

Seeing the System that’s Failing Us

Recognizing the capacity collapse is difficult because we’re stuck in patterns that perpetuate practices that keep us stuck in these cycles. For example:

• We normalize over-functioning (especially leaders and parents).
• Workplace cultures reward output, not well-being.
• Survival States (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) look like effort.
• The collapse is gradual, then sudden.
• We’ve grown accustomed to ignoring or suppressing internal signals.

Most people are so busy surviving within the system that they never get a chance to see it. But if we want to create meaningful change — we have to be willing to recognize the past patterns that are constraining ourselves, our teams, and our organizations from performing at our best.

But identifying and acknowledging these past patterns that are constraining us can feel foreign and even threatening. To admit that our “ways of being” might be contributing to our challenges means admitting we have to change, and our body’s response is always to try to stay the same.

This isn’t about blame or shame; it’s about expanding our perspective to see the system or water we’re all swimming in.  

We begin to see the system when we ask questions like:

• Why do we reward overwork and call it dedication?
• Why is burnout normalized, but rest is stigmatized?
• Why are leaders expected to give endlessly without refueling?
• Why do we treat stress and breakdowns as individual weaknesses, rather than predictable outcomes of pressure-filled environments?

What we often find is a system built on outdated beliefs:

• That people are machines, not complex humans.
• That productivity matters more than purpose.
• That performance must come at the expense of well-being.

These beliefs become embedded in policies, workflows, and leadership practices — not because people are evil or malicious, but because we haven’t paused and questioned them.

Reimagining a Superior System

The truth is: The system isn’t broken. It was built this way. And it’s working exactly as it was designed — to extract performance, not to cultivate capacity.

To truly evolve, we need to see how our systems (ways of working) are impacting people today. Only then can we understand why capacity collapse is occurring and implement solutions that actually address the issue.

We need to:

• Replace fear-based motivation with clarity, purpose, and safety.
• Build workplaces that regulate nervous systems, not just measure outputs.
• Redefine success to include sustainability, connection, and growth — not just speed or scale.

When we see the system, we reclaim our power to reimagine and redesign it — from the inside out.

Reflection

• What signals (emotional, physical, relational, cognitive) might be telling me I’m in a capacity collapse? What am I ignoring, suppressing, or avoiding?
• Where in my team or organization do I see signs of systemic exhaustion and capacity collapse? Who is withdrawing, shutting down, or over-functioning?
• What would need to change to prioritize capacity building – not just output? What structures, habits, policies, or practices would need to shift? How would you need to change your ways of executing, decision-making, problem-solving, or relationship-building?