To navigate the inevitable disruptions and endless demands of leadership, growth-oriented companies must intentionally pause, plan with clear endings, and communicate strategically to build business instinct, create time, and foster continuous relevance and innovation.
Executive Summary
In a rapidly changing business landscape where “work never ends,” mid-market leaders often face internal disruption when growth outpaces intentional strategic planning. This article argues that conscious pausing — often seen as a luxury — is an active and essential practice for leadership, enabling discernment, reprioritization, and the cultivation of crucial business instinct.
By embracing a “plan with endings” that serves as a guiding mantra rather than a rigid blueprint, organizations can proactively address change, optimize time, and reduce costs. This intentional approach, supported by clear communication and the strategic use of constraints, not only fosters adaptability and innovation but also empowers teams, strengthens trust, and ensures the company’s long-term relevance and competitive advantage.
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Our work never ends. We know and often accept that fact, when we lean into the ability to complete tasks; keep investing and scaling; and even while focusing on our best traits and developing skills to lead a growth oriented company. Yet, we don’t have to be resigned to it. Even when inevitably something gets too big or grows too fast. The clues were there yet weren’t noticed until something breaks. We can avoid this type of internal disruption. It takes conscious effort to slow down, pause, or even stop to let what is actually happening catch up to you.
Pausing with intention is a highly active practice. A large amount of energy is necessary to sift, discern, explore, assess, reprioritize, adjust, and choose what to do. There are juxtaposing forces: momentum of wins and productivity versus strategically validating that the right work is being done. The scarcity of time influences each of us differently, and being able to embrace that friction in our personality and work style is possible. Because you can discover the true potential within your reach right now by intentionally pausing and checking in.
Know the direction you are leading your company, and stay true.
Twists, turns, backtracks, even forward leaps happen in our journey. How you are able to show up to each directly relates to the long-term vision of where your company is headed.
Detailed long-term plans are obsolete when the first action happens. And, at the same time, taking action without the end in mind is a threat. Many entrepreneurs tell me they don’t make business plans; this is surprising because there is no overarching end with which to check in about a specific set of work and its results.
The responses I hear about choosing not to play (i.e. doing without a business plan) fall into one of these three buckets:
- Things change quickly, and a plan inhibits our ability to adapt.
- It takes too much time and comes with a high cost.
- Execution of a plan reduces our ability to create and innovate.
Planning is a choice. A choice of the direction to go and the end to evaluate progress. Clear endings initiate a pause to assess and reflect. The information garnered from assessment at completion points is necessary to discern the right work to be done right now, to stay aligned to the overarching strategic growth. The outcome of planning with clear endings is that in addition to seeing positive shifts in market share, profitability, and cashflow — you also create time.
Let’s dig into this a little more.
Change & Adaptability
Technology comes to mind — CEOs acknowledged for almost 10 years that integration of technology to create value and remain competitive is a challenge. Don’t forget that putting attention on other areas of your business that change also matter. Sometimes adaptability will be prioritizing activities that address changes necessary to remain relevant for organizational culture, employee growth, efficiency, cybersecurity, economic, social, and growth strategy.
Adaptability is the way we are able to show up to change. The stakes seem different when change is surprising or drastic, yet there are data points that will show you emerging patterns before this change arrives. More than measured data, it is the clues that come from conversations that create a sense of something too. Regular pauses you take just to assess information in all its forms is how you build business instinct.
Are you really willing to do the work? Amber De La Garza, The Productivity Specialist, shared with me that she built her business by initially waking up at 3:00 a.m. to work while her toddler was sleeping, showcasing true entrepreneurial hustle.
Business instinct shifts the need to respond quickly with little data to purposefully taking bold steps amidst quickly changing situations.
Time & Cost
“What is the cost of NOT planning?” Not only is this overused, it is the WRONG question to ask.
The prerequisite to getting to the right question to ask is to acknowledge your never-ending work, constantly juggling potential competing priorities, and the high level of commitment to pause and reflect. Planning engages a deeper level of time management and reduces cost when you seek out proactive productivity tools that match the work flow and style of you and your team.
Having a plan is a straightforward way to help the entire team know what the objectives are, what the right work is to do, and autonomy to reprioritize on their own. In 2024, Gallup reported only 22% of employees feel that leaders have a clear direction for the organization. Claiming your direction as a company and communicating that clearly will create time for you and your team.
You have control over what, when, and how you communicate about where the company is going. There are innate responses to repeating yourself — yet, we all need reminders. A commitment to repeating the message creates opportunity for team trust to increase. This is a place to capture potential within your organization.
You create time by clearly communicating your strategic plans with your company.
At this level, it is more like a mantra than a plan to execute. The essence of how you and your team do work is more important than the steps followed to get the work done.
Lean into the methodology you are using. Figure out how to use it more: more intentionally, more integration to workflows, and more exploring how to use existing processes for new initiatives. By doing this you will stretch both the business operating system and the capacity of processes. This reduces the heavy list of internal change management and leads to the adoption of something new.
This approach will stretch methodologies you use, too. From LEAN, Agile, EOS — each will have their own upper limits, especially when you keep business operations and capacity of processes at the center of your decision-making. When organizational business instinct identifies competitive opportunities that require doing things differently; or offering more professional growth opportunities internally; or recognizing people are finding solutions to workflow; then the methodology you’ve maximized is reaching a ceiling. Only then is it time to explore changing core internal operations.
Here is a question to open dialog about identifying the upper limits of the methodologies you are using:
What can we do differently or utilize within our existing methodology to remain competitive and relevant?
Here is a question to create more time:
What communication gaps in our current plan are preventing our company from effectively prioritizing and executing the right work today?
Create & Innovate
A written plan, project, objective or goal with a clear beginning and end are more likely to reach the desired outcome. Business owners rely on efficiency as a necessity, not a luxury: 71% of fast-growing companies have strategic plans, business plans, or similar long-range planning tools in place. (“Strategic and Business Planning Practices of Fast Growth Family Firms,” Journal of Small Business Management 2008).
Execution of a plan is as important as the planning. Amber De La Garza, The Productivity Specialist, spoke with me on the BOLD Business Podcast about the importance of constraints to amplify the effort of our work. It directly relates to decision-making for everything from calendar management to choosing what initiatives to implement, as well as determining the real problems we’re facing that need to be addressed.
She shared, “We don’t have our hair on fire. There does not need to be drama. It is just a thing we chose, the next thing we chose because it was the next thing, and it was the best thing at the time.”
Amber and I have led our companies through change. Even though the situations were different, the common theme was that the addition of constraints changed the game every single time. While we both say no diligently, she has never heard anyone assess like I do. Weekly Present Retreats, my Mondays, are deep work sessions dedicated to assessment, reflection, and strategic work, as well as making adjustments to the plan to make sure the changes remain aligned to our growth strategy.
These weekly sessions allow me to confidently say “no” to all the ideas, pitches, and shiny objects that don’t match the priorities.
For possible “yes” ideas, I put them on a note and into a small box labeled “Now & Near.” It is filled with corners of napkins, sticky notes, and scraps of paper. During my weekly Present Retreat I evaluate all the possible options that might be opportunities right now. From this work are all the ideas selected to do right now, kept because they might align within the year, or ones that go straight into the recycle bin.
The more closely you are connected to the biggest goals, the more readily and willing you can say “no” for more time to invest in what matters most. Your plan is a constraint — it is a way to confidently and compassionately say “this is an interesting idea, yet it doesn’t align with our goals right now.”
Even though CEO work is endless, you can create time to do your most important work: building your business instinct and charting the course forward to remain relevant.
Your company’s ability to stay relevant over time is the foundation of strategic growth. Internally, this means ensuring that every person understands the strategic growth path. Externally, it’s using what you can control to navigate through the ever- and rapidly-changing business landscape.
The solution is to create time. Creating time is rooted in a plan, with endings, that you and your management team pause and engage with regularly.
Three ways you can start to create more time:
- Develop your business instinct by purposefully seeking clues to changes in both competitors and customers, while also leveraging your company’s strengths.
- Having endings to projects offers the opportunity to invest time to gain a deeper understanding of emerging patterns.
- Implement constraints: When so many ideas are good ideas, constraints catalyze creativity and innovation.
Strategic decisions aren’t end points, they are guide posts.
You are who everyone ultimately looks to for certainty. We live in a world where ambiguity is the norm. Disruption is inevitable, and how your organization navigates through is up to you. It doesn’t have to be heavy or just on you. Each section of this article is also useful to executive and directors. Each person’s individual work is a facet of the true reality of your organization. Bringing all the facets together expands the ability to know what the risks the organization faces, and what ideas and opportunities can bring real value — and strengthens the way your company does work.
Staying true to your growth strategy offers you:
- A way to assess and reflect when reaching the end of a project or objective.
- A practice for deep strategic work sessions like the Present Retreat to build your business instinct.
- Clarity to communicate so that everyone understands the direction the company is headed and how they contribute to its success.
Creating time in this way is a path to engage in conscious adaptation with business levers, to build a growth strategy that ensures your company’s future by: embracing change; being adaptable; intentionally using time; maximizing resources; and catalyzing creativity as well as innovation.
You know you’ve found your competitive advantage when companies in the same space copy your ideas, when your organization proactively addresses disruption, and when fewer projects yield higher results.
The ceaseless demands of leading a growing company can feel overwhelming, but they don’t have to dictate your destiny. By intentionally carving out time for strategic pause, embracing plans with clear endings, and consistently communicating your vision, you fundamentally reshape your leadership. This isn’t about adding more to your plate; it’s about creating the clarity and capacity to build powerful business instinct, foster true adaptability, and confidently chart a course for sustained relevance and growth.
Your greatest competitive advantage lies not in endless activity, but in the deliberate choices you make to create time and lead with purpose.
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Still feel like you need a bit of help with some business direction on this topic? Then ACT to Plan by contacting me for a Business Basecamp 30-min Consultation. We’ll discuss your aims, where you are struggling, and options for you to navigate through it!
