Building while balancing: What I've learned about performance, endurance and modern leadership

International Women's Day often comes with the same brief: say something meaningful about being a woman in leadership, ideally without sounding either bitter or heroic. The challenge is to be honest without being dramatic, and reflective without repeating what everyone already knows.

So here's the practical version.

Yes, I've been the only woman in the room. Yes, I've had the mental load conversation. And yes, I once reviewed acquisition-related data while in labour. At the time, it didn't feel extraordinary. It was simply where work and life happened to intersect. I didn't experience it as a boundary violation or a badge of honour. It was just one of those moments that sums up modern leadership - imperfect, intense and slightly surreal.

If there's a lesson in it, it's this: you don't need boundaries that look impressive from the outside or what LinkedIn tells you. You need boundaries that suit you, your team and the outcomes you're responsible for. In eCommerce, particularly marketplaces, those outcomes don't pause. The platforms move, competitors adjust, and customers shift their expectations regardless of what's happening in your personal life.

There's a tendency to talk about "the juggle" as though it's a burden women must endure. In reality, managing multiple priorities, reading the room quickly and making decisions under pressure are not soft skills. They are commercial advantages. When you're balancing stakeholders across time zones, translating global strategy into local execution and navigating platform dynamics that can change overnight, prioritisation becomes a survival skill.

Operating in eCommerce in Australia sharpens that skill set even further. We are a high-performing but relatively small market, often explaining our dynamics to global counterparts who are used to larger scale. That constant translation builds clarity. It forces you to articulate why something will or won't work here. It trains you to diagnose before you advocate.

Women often develop those capabilities early, sometimes because authority is not automatically assumed. When you are not instantly afforded credibility, you learn to construct it. You learn to anticipate objections, choose language carefully and build alignment without losing momentum. Over time, that becomes less about proving yourself and more about mastering influence.

The number of female founders and eCommerce leaders in Australia is unquestionably growing. There are more women building brands, leading platform strategy and running technology-led businesses than ever before. The visibility is stronger and the confidence is tangible.

However, we are not yet at parity. For every female founder or marketplace expert I meet, there are still several male counterparts in similar forums. The ratio is improving, particularly in tech and platform-driven businesses, but women at scale remain the exception rather than the norm. Progress is real, but it is not complete.

I sometimes hear the suggestion that endurance is something leaders should move beyond. I disagree. Endurance without clarity leads to burnout, but endurance combined with clarity builds scale. When I launched Practicology from my kitchen table twelve years ago, endurance was essential. Scaling the business and later integrating into Pattern required something more structured: clear standards, disciplined hiring, and an uncompromising definition of what "good" looked like.

I prefer to think of myself as a builder rather than an educator. I enjoy building teams, systems and strategies that work. Teaching is simply part of that process. If you want others to build alongside you, you need shared understanding. In a global, publicly listed organisation, alignment cannot rely on authority alone. It requires clarity - about the market, about expectations and about outcomes.

One of the most powerful shifts I've made as a leader is moving away from zero-sum thinking. Many workplaces operate on an unspoken assumption that if the business wins, someone internally loses, or if the client wins, margin must suffer. In practice, that mindset is limiting.

A stronger discipline is to define what "winning" means for each party. For the business, it may be sustainable growth and capability. For the client, it is clarity and measurable outcomes. For the team, it is development, autonomy and fairness. Designing systems where those wins can coexist requires thought and sometimes uncomfortable conversations, but it reduces resentment and accelerates execution.

In eCommerce, where margins are tight and expectations are high, win-win leadership is not soft. It is efficient. It builds trust, reduces friction and allows teams to move faster because the rules are clear.

None of this happens by accident. A few habits have helped me navigate the complexity. Time blocking is non-negotiable; if something important is not scheduled, it rarely happens. Habit stacking, as described in Atomic Habits, is something I come back to repeatedly because small, consistent behaviours compound. I also make deliberate use of otherwise "dead" time, alignment calls in the car, clearing emails in transit, so that when I am with my children, I can be properly present.

More recently, I have stopped doom scrolling at night. The improvement in focus has been immediate, and Stolen Focus offers a sobering reminder of how fragmented our attention has become. Books such as No Rules Rules, The Who Method for Hiring and Blink have shaped how I think about talent and judgement, and they are ones I re-read because leadership at scale requires regular recalibration.

Ultimately, the most meaningful part of leadership is not the revenue milestones or the marketplace launches. It is watching people you have worked with step into bigger roles and build confidently themselves. If leadership only delivers personal success, it is small. If it multiplies capability, it compounds.

International Women's Day should not only celebrate women who have successfully navigated existing systems. It should prompt all of us to examine how we define performance and leadership. Outcomes should matter more than presenteeism. Clarity should matter more than politics. Standards should matter more than silent endurance.

The juggle is unlikely to disappear, and eCommerce and multi-channel retail will not slow down. The opportunity is to master both with intention, perspective and, occasionally, a sense of humour about where strategic thinking sometimes takes place.

And if you are building something ambitious in eCommerce and want to do it well, I am always happy to have that conversation.