Unstuck: How to Start Moving When the Destination Isn’t Clear
There’s a particular kind of organizational paralysis I’m observing these days. Facing a context that keeps shifting, wondering whether the resources required to reach your goals will be available, and growing doubts about whether the established vision is still within reach.
The need to respond to this shifting environment is real. Everyone on the team knows something has to shift. But when it comes time to get together and map out what this change is going to look like — something stops many organizations from getting started.
There’s a sense of being stuck.
How can you lead your team through change when you are struggling to even articulate a compelling vision?
Without a vision, many leaders are reluctant to begin planning. Or they may make a start, but things quickly stall. Or the work is handed to a working group, resulting in a document nobody fully owns.
Here’s my message to leaders: You don’t need a vision. You need a direction.
These are not the same thing. A vision is a fully-formed picture of a destination. But in a rapidly shifting environment, requiring this before you can begin often means you’ll never begin at all.
A direction is something different — and something most leaders already have. You know where you’re starting from. You can see the forces shaping your situation. You have a sense of which way ‘progress’ lies, even if you can’t describe it with precision. That’s enough. That’s all you need to take the next step.
Planning the Direction of Change
I’ve developed the “Planning the Direction of Change” tool to support this simple but important reframe. Where traditional planning processes begin with a vision and then work backwards, this tool starts from what you already know — and moves forward from there.
What makes this tool different from a traditional planning template is the starting point:
- You begin with context: “Where are we starting from?”
- And you probe forward together: “In which direction should we be moving?”
- You identify the path ahead: “What are the main steps we will take?”
- You mobilize a coalition: “Who will join us?”
- You attend to challenges: “What might get in our way?”
All this means that the plan that emerges is genuinely shared. There is buy-in and agreement that the starting steps are the right ones to take.
Dwight Eisenhower captured an underlying truth when he said,
“Plans are useless. Planning is essential.”
He wasn’t dismissing the value of plans. He was pointing out where the real value lies — bringing people together, exploring the situation, surfacing what matters, and building a shared sense of what you’re trying to do.
Such a process enables clarity. Such a process gets you unstuck.
Such a process helps you get moving in the right direction.