Руководство компаний должно инвестировать в здоровье лидеров так же тщательно, как клубы НФЛ — в игроков

In the NFL, leadership extends far beyond the sidelines. It permeates the front office, especially in the strategic construction of major contracts designed for championships and sustainable roster building. Recently, the Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions made headlines with two blockbuster deals. Philadelphia signed 25-year-old defensive tackle Jalen Carter to a four-year, $152 million extension, including $106 million guaranteed. The deal makes him the highest-paid interior defensive lineman in NFL history by average annual value. Detroit followed by signing running back Jahmyr Gibbs to a three-year, $67.5 million extension that can reach $75.75 million, making him the highest-paid running back in league history. Both players have already delivered at elite levels. Yet, contracts of this magnitude require a far broader calculation: age, durability, workload, future market trends, and how much elite production remains. NFL front offices are essentially underwriting future human capacity. Companies make similar bets every day. For example, a CEO’s compensation package reflects expectations of future value creation. Leadership Turns Compensation Into A Bet On Future Capacity While the bets front offices make are visible on the playing field, the same types of bets in business are less visible but no less consequential. Boards routinely commit millions of dollars to CEOs and other senior leaders through salary, equity, long-term incentive plans, retention packages, and other forms of executive compensation. Each commitment carries an implicit assumption about what that individual will deliver in the years ahead. For leaders, future value depends on experience, judgment, reputation, and the ability to sustain the workload attached to the role. That might mean moving frequently between time zones without a prolonged dip in performance, processing large volumes of information during an acquisition, enduring unexpected crises, or simply maintaining the energy required to lead effectively. The larger the enterprise and the greater the concentration of responsibility, the more expensive a decline in a leader’s capacity can become. NFL teams explicitly factor durability into player valuations. Organizations should apply similar rigor when assessing the physical, emotional, and cognitive capacity of leaders tasked with influencing significant enterprise value. Leadership Availability Has Economic Value In professional sports, availability is one of the clearest indicators of value. A player may be exceptionally talented, but missed games, recurring injuries, or an inability to sustain workload reduce how much of that talent the organization can actually utilize. On a macro level, it also changes how the organization calculates that player's return. Leadership has its own economics of availability. While an executive is unlikely to impact the organization due to a strained hamstring, prolonged, unmanaged stress, inadequate recovery, poor sleep, and declining physical capacity can gradually weaken both their performance and the enterprise as a whole. The economics of an executive’s impact offers one way to think about that value. If an executive’s time is hypothetically valued at $2,500 per hour and better health allows them to reclaim just five high-quality hours each week, that represents $12,500 in implied weekly capacity. Across 52 weeks, that amounts to $650,000 worth of the executive’s time operating at a higher level. That calculation is intentionally simplified, but it illustrates the leverage involved. Those hours become especially valuable when they influence an acquisition, a key capital allocation decision, a critical hire, a negotiation, or a strategic initiative involving tens of millions of dollars. One better hire, one avoided misstep, or one well-timed strategic decision can easily outweigh the cost of investing in the leader who makes it. Protecting Leadership Capacity Protects Enterprise Value Signing a major contract is only the beginning for a player, as winning organizations build the best possible infrastructure to support their long-term performance. Physicians, strength coaches, nutritional staff, recovery modalities, workload monitoring, and increasingly sophisticated performance systems are used to preserve a player’s availability and longevity as much as possible. The economics justify the investment. If a franchise commits $100 million or more to a player, protecting the body that produces that return becomes part of the business model. The same logic supports viewing leaders as executive athletes. Organizations routinely spend heavily to recruit, compensate, retain, and develop senior executives, yet the systems supporting their physical, emotional, and cognitive capacity are often far less sophisticated. A standard annual physical and basic wellness offerings do little to address the accumulated daily demands of frequent travel, inadequate recovery, sustained pressure, disrupted sleep, and years of high-level performance. The larger the bet on the leader, the more consequential it becomes to protect the capacity behind their leadership.