This week I want to pull together some of the best thinking from recent conversations on the podcast, alongside a few principles I come back to again and again in my work with senior leaders. Consider this your Friday consolidation.
The Six Tips
1. One plan. Not many.
Rebecca Homkes put this beautifully: we often have different strategies for different conditions — one for when we’re thriving, one for when we’re surviving. Her view, and I share it entirely, is that we should resist this. Settle on a single, well-considered strategy and execute it consistently. That is the one most likely to work.
2. Listen to the feedback loops.
They are everywhere — your customers, your senior team, the people on the front line who deal with clients daily. When you truly listen to all of it, you don’t necessarily need to change your strategy. But you may well need to adjust your steering. There is an important difference.
3. Planning and execution are not joined at the hip.
If something isn’t working, it is absolutely fine to change the plan. This is not failure. This is leadership. Your feedback loops (see above) will tell you when the time has come.
4. Consolidate around what you want to achieve this year.
Five-year visions have their place, but for genuine traction — for the kind of grip that takes hold across a team — bring it closer. What do we want to achieve this year? Then break it into months, then quarters. Bite-sized chunks create momentum.
5. The remedy for stress is always action.
I have been saying this for years and I will keep saying it. Even a decision counts as action — the moment you decide something, your brain registers it as forward movement, and the weight of inertia lifts. If you don’t yet know what you want, try writing down everything you don’t want. Start from there.
6. Learn to put it down.
Imagine holding a bottle of water. It’s light — no problem at all. But hold it for an hour, and your arm aches. Hold it all day, and you’ve done real damage. We do this with our responsibilities constantly. We don’t just hold one bottle; we become so practised that we pick up two, then three, then four. Your one thing for this week: notice what you are holding that you do not need to hold right now. Put it down. End at least one day this week in a calmer state than you began it.
This week’s focus
Which bottle have you been holding the longest?
Not just today’s to-do list — but the thing you have been carrying for weeks, perhaps months, that quietly drains you. Name it. Then decide: does it actually need to be you holding it?
Before you go…
The newsletter, videos, and podcasts take a little longer to write than I sometimes let on. If you'd like to say thank you, a coffee does the job rather nicely.
Bye for now.
Sue
