Editorial
The conversations I've had with teams and leaders in the last few weeks had something in common: They all expressed bold expectations and objectives for their people to achieve this year — from business growth, to major transformations and big implementations. These aren’t minor ambitions.
But as I listened, I couldn’t help but think of a familiar pattern. Like someone saying, “I want to be healthier,” or “I want to lose a few pounds,” while changing next to nothing about their behaviors to help them achieve it.
They can envision the result. They long for it. They may even feel envy when others talk about their journeys. But when it comes to doing the work, all the reasoning comes creeping in. “I don’t have the time to take a walk” or “I’ll start tomorrow as I already ate badly today.” I’ve definitely been guilty of it myself in the past.
Organizations are no different.
They want growth. They want transformation. But wanting without doing is just wishing. And while wishing may feel energizing in the moment (and can be powerful), alone, it changes very little. Sustainable success doesn’t come from vision or desire alone. It requires deliberate, aligned action.
Here’s how organizations and leaders can begin to bridge that gap.
1. Name What You Want to Achieve
Clear goals and measures create clear behavior. Vague or ambiguous objectives create mental clutter.
When organizations fail to name exactly what they want, they leave room for misalignment, assumptions and wasted energy. Goal ambiguity can increase anxiety and reduce motivation, especially in high-performing teams. Without clarity, people tend to fill in the blanks themselves and, often not in ways that lead to shared success. Many times the blank is filled in with something harsher or worse than is reality.
It’s critical to define what success looks like. What’s a win? What’s table stakes?
Ask yourself: Can I clearly define success in one sentence? And would my team describe it the same way?
2. Audit Where Effort Is Being Spent
Take a hard look at where your people’s energy is going. Are they working on what matters, or just staying busy?
Organizations can confuse activity with progress. We know that often people default to completing easier, time-sensitive tasks over more important but less urgent ones. It feels productive, but it doesn’t move the needle or bring us that much closer to the goal (compared to another task we could spend our effort on). This delicate dance requires intentionality to ensure that the most meaningful work remains the focus while necessary work is also completed.
Sometimes what drains our energy is the inability to let go of something low-impact or the hesitation to pivot, simply because we've already invested effort, or because ego gets in the way. We've all seen it: a leader so attached to a project that they struggle to make the smart choice, even when it's clear the project needs to change direction.
Ask yourself: What are my people spending their energy on and does that map to achieving our goals? What am I attached to that might be getting in the way? What low impact effort can we let go of?
3. Evaluate Behaviors and Mindsets
You can have all the strategy you want, but success only really happens if behaviors and mindsets are aligned to the strategy.
Think of behaviors as habits and mindsets as the beliefs that drive those habits. For example, if the dominant mindset is “this is how we’ve always done it,” even the best ideas will stall. Both psychological safety and openness to new thinking are key predictors of innovation and change adoption.
Ask yourself: What behaviors and mindsets are helping us move forward? Which ones are holding us back and why are they still showing up?
4. Examine the Supporting Structures
Even the most motivated teams can’t succeed without the right supporting structures in place.
Resources matter. Time, tools and autonomy aren't luxuries, they're prerequisites. A lack of support increases cognitive load, which reduces decision-making quality and emotional regulation. If you want people to do sustained, high-quality work, they need to be resourced for it. And not just for a crunch period, but consistently.
Also important is recovery. Work intensity without periods of recovery simply leads to burnout. Recovery doesn’t mean stopping everything. It means creating space for pause and restoration. Recovery is a part of performance, not separate to it.
And then there’s bureaucracy, an energy-sapping force all of its own. Unnecessary approval layers, redundant processes and outdated systems don’t just slow work, they create a psychological toll by reducing perceived agency and control and can increase emotional exhaustion in feelings of frustration and annoyance.
Ask yourself: Are our systems and structures empowering people or exhausting them? Where are the unnecessary drains on effort, time and focus?
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5. Remove the Barriers That Are Holding You Back
Once you’ve named the goals, assessed the energy flow, and examined the mindsets and systems, it’s time to take action.
This step requires courage because it often means making changes. Rethinking priorities. Cutting things that no longer serve the desired outcome. From a behavior design perspective, change sticks when we reduce friction. If a barrier exists, then what can you shift to make it easier? Going back to the “being healthy” example, if you have no time to make healthy dinners during the week (barrier=time), then perhaps you do meal prep on Sundays to speed it up during the week.
In organizational life, this might mean reducing meetings to create space for focus work, clarifying priorities, changing how or where money is invested or finally ending a long-running program that’s out of step with the strategy. Progress comes not from doing more, but from 1) taking intentional steps that move you forward and 2) removing what no longer serves.
Ask yourself: What is within my control to change right now, that will remove friction and unlock energy for what really matters?
You Can Want All You Want … It Doesn’t Make It Happen!
Every organization wants success. Every team wants to thrive. But it all requires aligned action. Just as the person who wants to be healthier must shop differently and create space for movement and rest, an organization must shift behavior, mindset and structure to truly evolve.
This is not about working harder or just doing more with less. It’s about working in alignment.
Start with some honest reflection:
- Are we clear on what we want?
- Are we spending energy, effort and resources where it matters?
- Are our habits and beliefs helping or hurting?
- Are our systems fueling success or draining it?
- What’s one thing we can start or stop today that brings us closer to what we say we want?
After all, outcomes are not determined by what we wish for, they’re determined by what we’re willing to change.
Editor's Note: Read more advice on leading through change below:
- 4 Steps to Support Employees Through Organizational Change — All transformations should be accompanied by formal change management plans that are human-centered and anchored in how the human mind works.
- Leadership at a Crossroads: Thriving Through Change in 2025 — The pressure to invest in technological innovations might lead you to believe it should come at the expense of workforce investments. That's a false dichotomy.
- 4 Common Goal-Setting Mistakes Your Company Might Be Making — The current lack of role clarity and engagement ties directly to ineffective goal setting at the organizational level.
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