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The power of sleep in a crisis
Do chief executives always need to be on duty to do a good job?
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The annoying thing with crises is that no one knows how long they will last.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
Emma Jacobs
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Sleeping on the job! That was one reaction to a report by The Sunday Times that Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye knocked off at 12.30am on March 21 to go to bed, leaving his deputy to decide to close Britain’s biggest airport. Some expressed surprise that stepping away mid-crisis, just hours after a fire broke out at a nearby power substation, was conducive to shut-eye. Transport Minister Heidi Alexander told LBC Radio: “I’ve had to deal with some pretty stressful situations in my time. I probably would struggle to sleep, to be honest.”
Dr Guy Meadows, founder of The Sleep School and author of The Sleep Book: How To Sleep Well Every Night, was incandescent about such criticisms. “I can’t believe we’re still talking about this in 2025,” he tells me. “I’m tired.” He thought the old mantra of “sleeping is cheating” was in retreat as organisations better understood the relationship between sleep and performance, problem-solving and decision-making.
