Stop 'Getting Back Into the Swing of Things'
Three frameworks for leaders who want more than just maintaining the status quo in 2025.
“Back in the swing of things” we say — but what are we swinging toward?
A new year invites fresh opportunity, yet it is so easy to revert to the old: The same meetings, processes, conversations.
No wonder we often find ourselves at work, overwhelmed earlier than we expected, saying to ourselves: “Oh boy, it’s going to be another year of this?”
Rather than merely getting “back into the swing of things,” I challenge you as a leader to question what it is that you are swinging toward, as a leader this year.
What do you deeply want to be true for your experience and outcome of the year — for yourself as a leader, and for your team?
A few key things to remember:
Maintenance is not forward movement.
Don’t confuse treading water as forward motion. Of course, certain phases of work require that we focus on keeping our head above the surface. But cannot forget that treading water all the time ultimately will not get us to where we’re trying to go.
Take a look at what was on your plate this past week and where you found yourself spending your time.
Are your motions only about maintenance? For instance:
Managing unread Slack DMs and emails
Reviewing routine status reports
Or are your motions also about forward movement? For example:
Creating clear job descriptions and expectations that will elevate your team's performance
Implementing accountability structures to help reduce team mistakes
Naturally, not everything we do as leaders can be purely forward movement. But we can be mindful to not conflate these two motions.
While forward movement is crucial, it's equally important to understand the cost of progress.
Question the myth of “more.”
Last weekend, I went on a beautiful hike in Tilden Park with my dear friend Jamie Woolf. She was the first Director of Culture at Pixar for over a decade, and now runs her own consultancy called Creativity Partners.
Jamie radiates a glowing, optimistic energy, and so I asked how she stays engaged in her work and avoids burnout.
Her response: “I question what is ‘more.’”
I found this to be remarkably profound. As leaders, our automatic default is to crave “more.” More goals. More output. More results.
Yet we forget “more” comes at a cost. You have to trade something in order to gain more of something else. If you want more productivity from your team, more clarity from upper leadership, more career development for yourself personally — there is something on the other side that gives, a trade that we have to submit.
For instance:
More team productivity might mean sacrificing our team’s engagement in the short-term, or perhaps distributing work load in different phases through the year.
More clarity from our upper leadership team may mean we ourselves as frontline leaders need to spend more time on our side communicating this need upward to our senior leaders.
More personal career development means perhaps less social media scrolling, and an hour or two on a weekend reading a book that helps us level up our skills.
Understanding these trade-offs helps us swing in a deliberate direction, rather than just moving for movement's sake.
But even with clear direction, leaders often struggle with competing priorities.
Lean into “Fluid Focus.”
“I feel caught.” I spoke recently with a senior leader who told me this. Wedged between his responsibilities as manager of managers, responsibilities as part of the senior leadership team, as well as his own individual contributor initiatives, his time — and psychological state — felt perpetually torn. “They all feel like competing interests with each other,” he elaborated. “I don’t know what to focus on as a leader.”
The feeling is fully justified. Complexity is the greatest invisible burden. When you have multiple complex areas to focus on, you in fact can’t focus on any of them well.
Conventional wisdom tells you, “Well choose one!” But reality screams back, “Untenable! You can’t drop any of these balls.”
Neither reality nor conventional wisdom though seem to remember this essential truth: All things do not have to get done all at the same time.
You can lean into what I call, “Fluid focus” — to choose a focus, and then change that focus as context requires.
For instance, rather than thinking, “I need to get X done personally, and make sure Y team member improves their performance, and make sure that my boss Z is happy, and then make sure that A, B, and C projects are on all track…”
Ask yourself these two questions:
“Big picture (say this quarter), what is most singularly important that happens?”
“Based on what is most singularly important in that time frame, what is the 1 lever that has the greatest potential to affect that outcome?”
From there, you then can find a path forward: “Okay, let me focus then on just that for these next 2 - 3 weeks, zero in on doing that supremely well. Then, I’ll reevaluate after those 2 - 3 weeks if that still make sense given the context. And then I’ll adjust.”
You free yourself when you can find more fluidity in your focus.
As we get "back to the swing of things," let's be intentional about our direction. The momentum we build now — whether in maintaining the status quo or pushing toward meaningful change — will carry through the year ahead.
Ask yourself: “What if this year wasn't about swinging harder, but swinging smarter? What if instead of carrying forward all of last year's motions, I chose my motions as a leader with purpose?”
Remember:
Maintenance keeps you afloat, but forward movement takes you somewhere.
More isn't better without understanding its trade-offs.
Your focus can be fluid without being fragmented,
The choice is yours to make, right now, in these early weeks. Let this be the year you don't just swing — you soar.
[Note: Want to dive deeper into the concept of Fluid Focus? Read the full framework here…]
If you’d like to work together in 2025 in being intentional about your direction as a leader, here are few ways …
🚂 Partner with me to roll-out a leadership training program for your managers.
🌿 Use Canopy, our lightweight leadership learning app, in your day-to-day.
📣 Invite me to deliver a team keynotes and workshops, remotely or in person.
🤝 Explore 1:1 executive coaching with me personally. (I’ve had a few spots open up for 2025 — I’ve had the privilege of coaching leaders at companies like Apple and Uber, and welcome the opportunity to share those learnings in-depth with folks one-on-one.)
I’d be honored to chat and see what might be the best fit for you. Feel free to reach out to me directly here 💚