Tag Archive for: Alignment

arrow cubes pointing in the wrong direction

The Quiet Cost of Almost-Alignment

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The most expensive misalignment usuall starts with a nod

The most expensive misalignment on an executive team rarely starts with a disagreement. It starts with a “nod” — physically or verbally — and everyone assuming it meant the same thing.

Nobody flags it. Everyone assumes they’re aligned. They’re not quite aligned. They’re almost aligned. And almost is expensive.

Almost-alignment hides behind professionalism.

Execution isn’t the problem. People go back to their teams, interpret the decision through their own lens, and move. It’s only weeks later that the gap becomes visible: when priorities conflict, resources pull in different directions, or the message sounds different depending on who delivered it.

I know I’ve experienced this time and time again. After a contentious conversation about what we should do next, only then do we realize that we aren’t all trying to achieve the same goal. Our understanding of the decision is different.

By then, the cost is already real.

It usually starts with a meeting that ended too cleanly.

Genuinely good decisions involve tradeoffs that different functions feel differently about. When a leadership team reaches consensus too quickly, it’s worth asking whether the hard part was actually worked through — or just skipped.

The most dangerous executive meetings are the ones where everyone nodded and nobody pushed.

What real alignment looks like

Everyone understands what was decided, why, what was traded off, and what they’re each responsible for next. They can walk out and tell their teams the same story — not the same words, but the same story.

That’s a higher bar than most leadership teams hold themselves to. It’s also the one that matters.

A simple test

After your next significant decision, ask each member of your leadership team independently: “What did we decide, and what does that mean for your priorities over the next 90 days?”

The gaps in those answers are your alignment gaps — and they’re worth closing before they close themselves in ways you won’t like.

Your Strategy Isn’t Necessarily the Problem

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Your Culture Might Be.

Your executive team can be fully aligned—and the business can still struggle to execute. 

That’s not a contradiction. It’s a clue.  Failure isn’t necessarily because the strategy is weak.  The executive team has debated it, pressure-tested it, and aligned on the direction. On paper, priorities are clear.

And yet execution slows. Decisions get revisited. Teams hesitate. Initiatives often stall quietly, not dramatically.  The issue isn’t strategy. It’s the gap between your strategy and your culture. 

 

Culture is how work gets done when leaders aren’t in the room.

It shapes:

  • How decisions actually get made
  • What risks feel safe to take
  • How conflict is handled—or avoided
  • Whether accountability is real or symbolic

When strategy asks the organization to behave one way, but day-to-day habits and norms reinforce another, execution stalls.  Not loudly. Subtly.

You see it in:

  • Decision ownership that’s unclear or constantly escalated
  • Lingering fear of risk
  • Competing priorities that haven’t been resolved
  • Mid-level leaders left to figure out how to turn strategy into action on their own

From the executive suite, it can look like resistance or capability gaps.  From the middle of the organization, it feels like confusion—or whiplash.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The organization is executing—just in the way the culture allows.

Closing the gap between culture and strategy isn’t about more communication or motivation. It’s about:

  • Clear decision ownership and authority
  • Explicit trade-offs, not just priorities
  • Clear guidance for how leaders turn strategy into day-to-day decisions
  • Calling out behaviors and habits that work against the strategy

This is the hard, often overlooked work between agreement on the strategy and results.  So, if execution is slower or messier than expected, the question isn’t:  “Why don’t people get it?”

The question is:

“How has this organization been trained and incented? What has it been told is acceptable?’ ‘What have we channeled what is expected?’ And does our strategy require something different?”

That’s where execution actually begins.

Why Strategy Often Fails

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Not because it’s wrong, but because the structure can’t carry it.

Many leadership teams assume that once a strategy is defined, execution will follow. But in reality, strategy often collapses under the weight of a structure that wasn’t built to support it. 

Intentional Design—the operating systems, roles, and workflows that turn strategic intent into daily traction – accelerates the translation of strategy into execution.

Align. Design. Lead.TM

This article is part of our series introducing our uncomplicated, powerful framework designed to help build organizations that can adapt, perform, and thrive through complexity. To read previous articles in the series:

Introduction to the Align. Design. Lead. framework

Executive Misalignment is a Silent Killer

Align Case Study

Strategy collapse is a real risk for organizations facing: 

  • Rapid growth or new product launches—where structure hasn’t kept pace with scale
  • Post-acquisition complexity—with overlapping roles, unclear authority, and conflicting ways of working
  • Shifting go-to-market models—where cross-functional alignment is critical but hard to find
  • Evolving leadership or governance—where decision-making defaults to a few rather than being distributed

In these environments, even strong strategic plans get bogged down by unclear roles, misaligned teams, slow decision cycles and over-reliance on informal channels. Effort is duplicated. Handoffs missed. Authority is ambiguous. Collaboration is inconsistent. Execution begins to depend on personalities, not process.

It’s not a failure of intent. It’s a failure of design.

Design the organization to support the strategy – regularly

It often takes an objective analysis to understand the highest value changes you need. Here’s how we work with clients in the Design phase:

  1. Clarify the Work and Focus the Design:  Starting with our Align. Design. Lead. Organization Assessment tool, we hear directly from you about where you most significant issues may lie. We can then dive deeply into what must get done to deliver on the strategy—and what’s getting in the way. This approach adds efficiency and quicker return on investment to the effort.
  2. Define the structure: We evaluate and realign roles, reporting lines, and team interdependencies for strategic fit.  Collaboration is streamlined and agility to meet changing market needs is increased.
  3. Strengthen decision-making: We map and realign decision rights so execution flows faster—and ownership is clear.
  4. Support the middle: We ensure mid-level leaders have the tools, clarity, and support to operationalize change and lead the shift.

The Outcome: From vision to traction

  • Strategy gets translated into real, workable plans
  • Execution moves faster, with fewer dropped balls
  • Leaders know who’s responsible for what, and how to collaborate to make change stick

This is what Design looks like in action—and why it’s often where momentum is won or lost.

If you’re rolling out a new strategy—or scaling into a new phase—and your teams aren’t moving with it, let’s talk.

Schedule a conversation

 

Align. Design. Lead.TM is a flexible, non-linear framework that helps organizations move through inflection points with clarity and momentum. Whether you’re scaling, retrenching, or reimagining your business, the framework meets you where you are — helping you:

  • Align leadership teams to operate with strategic focus, speed, and cohesion
  • Design the organization to match your strategy—structure, roles, and workflows built for execution, not just org charts
  • Lead with the capacity and mindset required by mid level leaders to navigate uncertainty and drive change

For an overview of the full framework

Is your organization is under pressure but needs some assistance on where to focus next? We’d love to talk.

No fluff. No one-size-fits-all. Just clarity, momentum, and the confidence to move forward.

 

Schedule a call

Align Case Study

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The Align. Design. Lead. framework

In our last article, we introduced the Align component of our Align. Design. Lead.TM framework—and why executive misalignment is a silent killer of strategy and speed.

This week, we’re sharing a real-world example of how we helped one SaaS company confront that problem head-on.

The Challenge: Strong product, but strategic drift and weak team cohesion.

Our client—a PE-backed SaaS firm—had recently rebranded and launched a product that dramatically shifted its value proposition. But while the business was evolving, the executive team wasn’t.

As the CEO told us:

“We’ve been working on the business for years, but not on the team.”

Despite their market opportunity, they were stalling—fragmented execution, slow decisions, and siloed leadership. Strategy was drifting. Culture was eroding.

Our Approach: Get the team fully aligned before the business needs to shift again

1. Diagnose what’s really going on

We interviewed each executive, surfacing gaps in strategic focus, role clarity, culture, decision-making, and use of time. We didn’t just look for disagreement—we looked for drift: the slow, often unnoticed slide away from shared direction and relevance, that quietly erodes performance.  These interviews identified strengths and disconnection points on the team, allowing us to target our work to impact what would truly make a difference for this team and company.

2. Clarify leadership identity and intent

As they repositioned in the market and integrated acquisitions, we helped the team define how they needed to show up—to each other and the organization. We revamped communication rhythms, reset meeting structures, and anchored the team’s identity around shared intent.

3. Redesign behaviors and operating rhythm

The team needed to work together with the same rigor they applied to the business. We helped them define new norms, leadership behaviors, and cadence—all matched to the speed and pressure of their growth stage.

4. Shift decision rights and governance

Decision-making had become overly centralized with the CEO. We mapped where decisions should live, redesigned team structures, and installed collaborative decision practices. The result: distributed leadership, faster moves, and more ownership.

The Results: From fragmentation to forward momentum

  • The team began operating as one team—not just a collection of functions. Strategy drift slowed. Shared accountability rose.
  • Quarterly meetings evolved from tactical updates to forward-looking problem-solving, sharpening their ability to navigate what’s next.
  • Decision-making got faster and more collaborative, enabling quicker responses to real-time opportunities and risks.

 

“This work really helped me and the team grow over the past two years.”

— Company CEO

When execution is slow, look at the team—not just the plan.

This is what Align looks like in action—and why it’s often the first move to make when growth accelerates or stalls, product pivots hit resistance, or execution starts slipping at the top.

Is your leadership team feeling the strain of change but struggling to move together?

let’s talk.

No fluff. No generic offsites. Just clarity, traction, and alignment where it counts most.

Align. Design. Lead.TM is a flexible, non-linear framework that helps organizations move through inflection points with clarity and momentum. Whether you’re scaling, retrenching, or reimagining your business, the framework meets you where you are — helping you:

  • Align leadership teams to operate with strategic focus, speed, and cohesion
  • Design the organization to match your strategy—structure, roles, and workflows built for execution, not just org charts
  • Lead with the capacity and mindset required by mid level leaders to navigate uncertainty and drive change

For an overview of the full framework

 

Is your organization is under pressure but needs some assistance on where to focus next? We’d love to talk.

Schedule a call

Align. Design. Lead.

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How your organization should be wired to think, decide, and act.

From strategy to execution.

 

Let’s be clear.

Some organizations do suffer from flawed strategies. But more often, we see good strategies break down because of what’s underneath:

  • Misalignment at the top
  • Structures that can’t carry the load
  • Leaders trying to lead through change without the time, tools, or clarity they need

That’s where Align. Design. Lead. TM comes in.

It’s not a process you follow. It’s an approach you take—one that adapts to your starting point. Whether you need all three parts or just one right now, the framework meets you where the pressure is real.

  • ALIGN your senior team—not just around strategy, but how you decide, execute, and lead together
  • DESIGN the structure, roles, and workflows to move from vision to traction
  • LEAD with the adaptability and clarity your organization needs right now

Here’s the part many leaders miss:

In times of uncertainty, the instinct is to add layers—more processes, more rules, more initiatives. But complexity doesn’t need more complexity.

You need elegant simplicity—a way to cut through the noise and focus on what actually enables your organization to function, adapt, and perform.

 

 

Align. Design. Lead. is that kind of simplicity. It’s built from 25+ years of working with organizations at their most critical inflection points—growth, contraction, reinvention, and reset.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll unpack each part of the framework —and how our clients are applying it strategically, selectively, and successfully.

 

Schedule a call or Learn more

 

 

Executive misalignment is a silent killer

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Here’s what to do about it

Align. Design. Lead. TM

This article is part of our series introducing Align. Design. Lead.TM —our uncomplicated framework designed to help build organizations that can adapt, perform, and thrive through complexity.

In our launch piece, we outlined the full model. Today, we’re diving into the first and often most overlooked phase:

 

ALIGN.

Most organizations don’t realize their leadership team is misaligned—until the effects show up in slower decisions, stalled results, and frustrated mid-level leaders.

Alignment isn’t about total agreement. It’s about unity: shared intent, clear roles, defined decision rights, and the leadership behavior to back it up.

At inflection points—when you’re rethinking your operating model, pivoting, merging, or scaling—executive alignment becomes the fulcrum of execution.

Why? Because in high-stakes moments, ambiguity flows downhill. If the top isn’t clear, the rest of the system fragments fast.

Consider these common scenarios:

  • Your strategy gets lean. In a retrenching environment, leadership clarity isn’t just helpful—it’s a  critical success factor. A unified team ensures that cuts and priorities are made with precision, not panic.
  • The senior team isn’t on the same page.  AI may help optimize operations, but it can’t clarify purpose, reconcile competing agendas, or build trust. Only aligned leadership teams can do that.
  • Your teams shrink and tech scales.  Alignment becomes your most significant strategic advantage. Flatter orgs move fast, but only if the top is pulling in the same direction. Without that cohesion, velocity turns to chaos.

Before you reduce headcount and reorganize, align your leadership team. 

Misalignment often creates the very inefficiencies that lead to downsizing. When leadership aligns first, decisions about where to reduce—and where to reinvest—become strategic, not reactive.

Here’s how we help clients in the Align phase of the framework:

  1. Diagnose alignment by mapping current vs. desired state across strategic and cultural dimensions.
  2. Clarify leadership identity and intent—what your team stands for, how it shows up, and what the business needs now.
  3. Define leadership behaviors and operating rhythm to match the speed, pressure, and complexity of your environment.
  4. Map decision rights and governance—so everyone knows who decides what, how, and when.

The payoff? Sharper execution, faster decisions, and a leadership team that accelerates momentum instead of diluting it.

The risk of inaction? Strategic drift. Culture erosion. A widening gap between what you say and what actually gets done.

If your team understands the strategy but isn’t agile in moving it forward—this is where you want to begin.

Align. Design. Lead.TM is a flexible framework that helps organizations move through inflection points with clarity and momentum. Whether you’re scaling, retrenching, or reimagining your business, the framework meets you where you are — helping you:

  • Align leadership teams to operate with strategic focus, speed, and cohesion
  • Design the organization to match your strategy—structure, roles, and workflows built for execution, not just org charts
  • Lead with the capacity and mindset required by mid level leaders to navigate uncertainty and drive change

For an overview of the full framework

Is your organization is under pressure but needs some assistance on where to focus next? We’d love to talk.

No fluff. No one-size-fits-all. Just clarity, momentum, and the confidence to move forward.

Schedule a call

Designing for Uncertainty

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How to Build A Resilient Organization in a Shaky Economy

Uncertainty isn’t a temporary disruption anymore—it’s the new background noise of doing business. Tariffs shift markets overnight, massive government layoffs ripple through industries, and investment slows as caution takes hold. And if it’s not these specific uncertainties, rest assured, the changing world will offer up others to take their place.

Many organizations are structured for predictable growth and efficiency—but that model cracks under pressure. One of the reasons organizations struggle with responsiveness is because they are built for stability, not agility.

So how do you design for a world where the ground is always shifting?

1. Build for Flexibility, Not Just Efficiency

Highly optimized org charts look good on paper—but they tend to collapse when circumstances change. Instead, consider flatter structures, cross-functional teams, and role fluidity. Think less about locking people into permanent roles and more about how teams can self-organize to solve emerging problems. This doesn’t mean you need to completely remove the management structure. It does mean you need to lead for empowerment, not control.

2. Create Distributed Decision-Making

In volatile times, centralized decisions move too slowly. Flatter organizations and more fluid roles needs to include distributed decision-making and autonomy so you can respond quickly in a shifting economy. Push decision-making authority closer to the action—equip leaders at every level with the clarity and trust to act quickly. Ensure alignment by creating guardrails for action with a clear vision and purpose, expressed values, and simple guidelines that inform decision making. Speed and clarity are your competitive advantages.

3. Design for Scenario Planning

A good org design helps leaders ask: “What if…?” rather than scramble to respond once something happens. Build routines for scenario planning into your leadership rhythms. Let the organization know this is part of how you are leading. Amidst uncertainty, the more people understand you’re planning for a variety of potential futures, the more their concern about the unknown diminishes. Structure your organization to flex without breaking when the unexpected arrives.

4. Reduce Internal Friction

In times of uncertainty, even minor bottlenecks become major liabilities. Look at your workflows, approval processes, and communication norms. Are they built for clarity and momentum—or control and caution? You’ll need more of the former.

Bottom Line:

Resilient organizations don’t guess right about the future. They’re just better at responding when the future surprises them. They can respond because they have proactively prepared. Design yours with that reality in mind.

Giving Constructive Feedback to Leaders

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How to Shape the Leaders Who Shape Your Organization

Giving feedback to leaders is different from giving feedback to employees. Leaders come with a track record of success, authority, and influence and have likely given plenty of feedback themselves. But receiving it? That can be more difficult. Leaders often feel their success ensures their impact, thinking, and self-awareness are well-developed. However, no leader is perfect. Providing feedback requires balancing their reputation, past successes, and sense of control with what they need to hear. If you’re serious about navigating change and building a thriving organization, even top leaders need feedback to keep growing.

The challenge is that giving feedback to leaders isn’t just about correcting behavior or boosting performance; it’s about steering strategic thinking, fostering leadership growth, and fine-tuning their approach to managing others. Here’s how to make it happen effectively:

Focus on Impact, Not Just Performance

Leaders aren’t just executing tasks—they’re driving strategy, setting the tone, and influencing teams. So, when giving feedback to a leader, the conversation needs to center around their broader impact on the organization. It’s not about nitpicking small errors; it’s about helping them understand the ripple effects of their leadership style on the broader organization’s performance and future.

Example: Instead of saying, “Your team missed the deadline,” you could say, “From where I sit, the way you set priorities last quarter impacted the team’s ability to meet deadlines. It seems that goals and strategy weren’t as aligned as they could be. Let’s explore how we can align your strategic focus with operational goals to avoid this in the future. What’s your take on the situation.?”

Frame it as a Partnership in Growth

Leaders are accustomed to being problem solvers, not problem receivers. So, frame your feedback as a collaborative effort to help them grow, rather than a top-down directive. When you position the conversation as mutual exploration of how to improve, it lowers defenses and sets the stage for real growth.

Example: “I’ve noticed cross-functional communication has been challenging for your team.  Let’s work together to identify how you can improve communication channels and support your team in navigating these barriers. What do you think may be contributing to this situation?”

Challenge Strategic Thinking, Not Just Behavior

When giving feedback to leaders, it’s essential to elevate the conversation beyond daily operations. Leaders influence the long-term direction of the company, and your feedback should push them to think more strategically, whether that’s about how they make decisions, allocate resources, or drive change.

Example: Instead of focusing solely on how a leader managed a specific project, you might say, “I see a pattern where you and the team are reacting to issues instead of anticipating them. For example, … How can we shift your team’s focus to be more proactive in identifying potential challenges?

Acknowledge Achievements, But Don’t Sugarcoat Reality

Leaders are often high performers, which can make delivering tough feedback feel uncomfortable. And, in my experience their perceptions suffer from a bit of a halo effect – the individual’s high performance is seen to bleeds over into other areas. However, high performer are not high performers in everything they do. You’re not doing anyone any favors by sugarcoating. Start by recognizing their successes, but be direct and honest about areas where they need to grow—because, frankly, they know when you’re holding back.

Example: “You’ve done an excellent job rallying the team around key initiatives. I’m going to push you to do even better. I’ve noticed you are making some decisions too quickly without getting sufficient input from your stakeholders. That gets in the way of you being even more successful.  Let’s work on finding a balance between quick decision-making and gathering broader input.”

Encourage Leadership Development and Self-Reflection

Great leaders are lifelong learners, but they don’t always have someone pushing them to keep developing. Your role isn’t just to point out what’s wrong—it’s to help them continue their leadership journey by encouraging self-reflection and providing opportunities for growth.

Example: “You’ve accomplished a lot this year and I want to set you up for success next year. I’d like to challenge you to consider how you can strengthen your team’s leadership pipeline so that so much doesn’t fall on you. How can you mentor your direct reports to ensure that they’re developing into future leaders, too?”

Done right, feedback becomes less about correction and more about collaboration—making you, and them, stronger leaders in the process. After all, shaping great leaders is how you shape a great organization.

A Better Way to Motivate

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Dynamic Alignment works in any performance management process

 

We recommend Dynamic Alignment to leaders at all levels as we train or coach them. It starts quite easily by setting expectations a bit differently. And it relies on engaging with team members in simple, but essential ways — to build a sense of engagement and collaboration. It’s designed for the way we work today, as we face constantly shifting priorities that require ever more agility.

The whole idea behind performance management is to align effort, achieve results, and, at its core, motivate your team members. The problem is, the old models aren’t nearly as effective anymore. They don’t work when an organization needs to adjust to rapidly changing circumstances, because many of our performance management processes are built for stability and static alignment. Traditionally, it’s based on the carrot and the stick principle.  Goals are set. Progress is tracked over time. If you perform well, you’re rewarded. If not, rewards are withheld. The tension with a process that rewards alignment when agility is needed, is often demotivating. Goals are not connected to results because of shifting priorities, and people feel their efforts are wasted.

No matter what your formal performance management process, you can still use Dynamic Alignment to get more out of it.  The techniques manage the tension between alignment and agility, reducing frustration from wasted effort, which increases motivation – and engagement.

 

4 Ways to Build Dynamic Alignment

  • Dynamic Alignment still starts with setting goals. But the first step to support a motivating process is to ensure that your team members understand the goals are creating clarity, not certainty. From the beginning set the expectation that these are the goals AND they will most likely change in priority, scope, etc. This aligns expectations and builds trust because they aren’t caught off guard or frustrated by priority shifts when they invariably happen. Let your team members know that opportunities and challenges will arise for the business and the team. You may find that a particular path is not taking them where the team needs to go. Encourage your team members to discuss opportunities and challenges they see over time that may indicate a course correction is needed. This gives them the opportunity to be a co-creator in priority shifts. The shifts are done with them, not to them.
  • When priority shifts happen, it’s essential to explain why and check for deeper understanding.  Why is this more important than our previous priority? How will it create bigger, better, or more critical impact? Why is it a good thing for our customers or clients? Explain that it’s not personal. It’s not because the individual is doing a poor job or was focused on the wrong thing. When a person understands the why, it allows them to connect to their personal why, increasing their engagement and motivation.
  • When a project or work deliverable is deprioritized, have a conversation about what can be used from the work that has already been done.  Frustration increases and motivation decreases when we make progress against a goal, only to have it be deprioritized — especially when it happens repeatedly. It’s like rolling the boulder up the hill and having it roll back down. People begin to see less and less value in putting in the effort when they perceive it’s just going to be for nothing. How can it be applied to the new priorities? What did we learn along the way that could have a positive impact on the new priorities? What skills did they hone? Recognize the value that the effort to-date has created.
  • Dynamic Alignment must be horizontal as well. When your team’s priorities are being realigned, demotivation is still a threat if alignment doesn’t exist with the people they need to collaborate with to make things happen. Cross-boundary misalignment often leads to conflict, confusion, and isolation. When left unresolved, collaboration is seen as a punishment, not engaging and valuable.
Motivation, especially amidst continually shifting priorities, is critical to success. Creating dynamic alignment makes it easier for employees to understand why things are changing and how their role is important to making that change happen. Ultimately, you help them recognize how this priority affects their customers’ satisfaction, their team’s accomplishments and their own success.

 

And it can be leveraged within whatever performance management process your organization uses.

Contact us for more information on how we help your leaders apply dynamic alignment and better motivate their teams.

4 Must-Do Items on Every Leader’s January Checklist

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We’re starting another year. Like any other, it will be filled with opportunities and challenges, achievements and disappointments, zigs and zags. During these first couple weeks of the year, position yourself and your team for success in the months to come. Here are 4 actions that will help you start the year personally centered, organizationally aligned, and ready to go.
How can you and your team get off on the right foot in 2023?
Reconnect to your North Star.  What is your big “why?” Why do you do the work you do? How is it helping you live your values? How does your work advance your personal and career goals? Your business goals? What needs to change to move you further along this year?
  • There are hundreds of tools online to help you do this.  Here’s one.

 

  • If you’re already sure of your North Star, here’s a quick tool for moving you forward: with your north star in mind, create a “Start-Stop-Continue/ Improve” list. Focus on specific behaviors like “start spending 5 minutes preparing for every meeting/discussion by writing down how it aligns with my purpose and my goals and the top three things I want to accomplish.” Or “stop complaining in front of my team and focus on solutions.”

 

  • No matter what you do, write your thoughts down and put an alert in your calendar to check in with them on at least a quarterly basis. As this year ramps up we will be distracted by fire drills, urgent requests, and changes in plans. Aligning to your North Star will allow you to focus more fully on adding value and saying no to non-value-add activities.
Clarify goals.  For many of you, December and January are about setting annual goals for yourself and your team. Make sure you and your team are clearly aligned. Engage your team members in individual conversations about how frequently they want to check in on goal progression and the best way you can support them. Also, decide how you will reprioritize when inevitable change comes along. Even if you did this as recently as December, a quick check-in is important. People lose focus over the holidays, things change quickly and clarifying expectations at the beginning of the year leads to better alignment and happier team members.
Assess your personal routines.  Research shows that having routines can allow us to be more creative.  By creating routines around repetitive leadership tasks, we are able to direct our free cognitive resources to learning and creativity.  What are your current routines? What else could you routinize? For example, set up ‘do not disturb’ on your messaging while you’re doing concentrated work.  That way, responding to messages becomes routinized, and you’re able to respond at a time when you can focus more fully on the messages. Another way to improve your leadership is to consider your daily habits… what do you do almost without thinking or planning? What should you start/stop/continue?  Here’s a great list shared by 21 executives.
Do a mental health check.  How are you feeling as you start the year? Take an honest look at your emotional and mental health. Many of us are energized and ready to go. Many others are still feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, and daunted by what lies ahead of us. Commit time each day to taking care of yourself. Go for a walk. Connect with friends. Read. Do something that feeds your energy. Your company likely has confidential resources that you can access to help you understand and improve your health.
Being intentional around these four areas, you’ll position yourself for a great start to 2023.
What else do you do to start your new year with intention?