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Choosing the right next chapter is a different discipline from planning the next step.
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Grow Yourself To Grow Your BusinessSmash through growth ceilings,
Most of the strategic planning conversations I observe and participate in are operating at the level of the next step. Which is entirely reasonable. Next steps are concrete, actionable, and the natural unit of progress. But they carry a built-in assumption that is worth making visible. That the current chapter still fits.
The Assumption Inside the Next StepMost high-capacity leaders are skilled at optimising within a chapter. They can take an existing business model, a role, a strategic direction, and find the leverage points that accelerate it. That capability is real and valuable. But it is a different capability from asking whether the chapter itself still fits. Whether the framework of your current life, the way you spend your time and intellectual energy, the vision you are oriented toward, is the expression of who you are now, or whether it is the inherited output of decisions that a person who has, since then, quietly evolved, made years ago.
When the Chapter and the Person Are MisalignedWhen the chapter and the person are misaligned, optimising within the chapter produces faster movement on a path that is increasingly not yours. The efficiency improves. The sense of direction deteriorates. And at some point the question that has been deferred forces itself into the conversation.
What Happens When You Question the ChapterThe leaders I have worked with who have had the courage to question the chapter, not just the next step, consistently describe the same experience. An initial anxiety that the questioning will produce chaos. Followed by a clarification that is disproportionately powerful relative to the effort. Followed by a quality of momentum that was not available from inside the old chapter, no matter how well it was executed.
If the next step keeps landing but the direction feels off, book a 15-minute Strategy Call and we will look at whether the chapter itself still fits who you have become.
To your brilliance, Tanya Cross Industry Leader Coach & The Coaches’ Coach BAppSoSc (Counselling) |
