A narrative for founders and leaders ready to reclaim momentum
A subtle shift in the air
Tom had built his engineering consultancy much like countless founders before him: through instinct, tenacity and a willingness to hold the reins tightly enough that nothing ever slipped through the gaps. It was a good business with fourteen people doing solid work through relationships that had been nurtured over years. From the outside, it was easy to assume everything was moving in the right direction.
But leadership doesn’t always reveal itself in external moments. It usually shows up internally first, and often in ways that are easy to ignore.
On a quiet Tuesday morning in early spring, Tom arrived at the office with a familiar sense of responsibility and the expectation that he was there to keep the whole business on track. But something felt slightly off. Not broken, not failing, no particular problems or challenges, it just felt heavier. Meetings that had once felt energised were dragging, decisions that used to be instinctive now required more effort. The team seemed marginally out of sync, as if everyone was working a fraction harder than usual just to keep things moving.
Something in the business had started to lose its natural rhythm, and tom noticed it. Then, like many founders do at this early stage, he carried on with his day.
There’s a particular kind of stuckness that forms quietly and sort of sneaks up on us. It’s subtle enough to ignore but persistent enough to feel. And Tom was beginning to feel it.
Knowing but not moving
In my work with founders, and in my own journey long before I ever became a coach and mentor, this is one of the most revealing stages of leadership. It’s the moment where the leader becomes aware that something isn’t working quite as it should, and may even understand roughly what needs to change, but doesn’t yet move towards action.
It’s not fear, denial, or ignorance. It’s simply that the discomfort hasn’t yet become important enough.
Tom could see the signs. The informal way of working that had served the business so well in its early years had begun to slow them down. The team were waiting on decisions that should never have needed his involvement. He was spending increasing amounts of time solving issues he’d hoped, even assumed, the business had already outgrown.
But founders are remarkably good at absorbing discomfort. They internalise it until it becomes part of the noise of running a company. So Tom did what many leaders do in this phase: he rationalised it, saying “it’s just a busy month, the team need a bit more time, this is how growing a business feels, we’re coping, and it’s fine”.
Years ago, I remember doing something similar. I used to arrive early, long before the team, convinced that if I got ahead of the day, I could stay ahead of the business. But there came a morning where I stopped in the middle of an empty office, surrounded by the soft hum of the lights, and finally recognised what I had been avoiding: the business wasn’t stuck because the market was tough or because we lacked talent, it was stuck because the way I was leading it had stopped serving the shape the business had become. I knew what needed to change, I just hadn’t made it important enough to act.
That was my pivot moment, although I didn’t see it as such at the time. Tom was standing in the same space, the uneasy territory between clarity and courage, and it only takes one moment to tip the balance.
It reminded me of the line from the movie “We Bought A Zoo” when Matt Damon’s character says to his son who’s try to pluck up the courage to talk to a girl, “It only takes one moment of insane courage…”
The question that triggered movement
For Tom, the catalyst arrived unexpectedly, during a routine team meeting. Nothing dramatic happened, there were no raised voices or urgent crises, just a straightforward question from one of his senior engineers, offered with complete sincerity: “Why are we still doing it this way?”
There was no frustration behind it, just a genuine curiosity about a process that felt outdated. But for Tom, the simplicity of the question made it impossible to hide from what he already knew. They were still working that way because he hadn’t redesigned the system, or to take a deeper level – allowed the system to be redesigned by others. Not because it was the best approach, but because he had been too busy maintaining the day-to-day to consider something better.
That was the moment the cost of not changing became visible. The weight of all the delays, the repeated explanations, the reliance on him for answers, the constant triangulation, it all settled on him at once. And once he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it.
Later that afternoon, when we spoke, his tone had changed. It wasn’t dramatic but it was emotional because he could feel the sense of relief building because he was finally ready to look at the business with fresh eyes.
Seeing the system behind the symptoms
When we met, I didn’t ask for dashboards or data. Instead, I asked him to talk me through how work moved through the business. Not how he wished it moved, or how he planned for it to move, but how it actually moved in the everyday moments of reality, handovers, conversations, assumptions and decisions.
As he described his week, it became clear that he wasn’t dealing with many different problems, he was dealing with many reflections of the same problem. This is a truth I’ve seen so often it no longer surprises me: the symptoms of stuckness may appear scattered, but the cause is nearly always structural.
To help Tom see this, I asked him to open the notebook he carried everywhere, the one where he scribbled questions from the team, reminders to follow up, small frustrations, and notes about projects. As he flipped through the pages, the same themes emerged. A client wanting a faster turnaround. A project manager unclear about priorities. An engineer asking for more detail. A supplier delay. A pricing question no one else felt confident answering. Individually, each of these made perfect sense. But when placed side by side, they formed a pattern.
I asked him, gently, “If you could solve one of these issues properly, which one would make the others feel lighter or disappear altogether?”
He looked down at the notebook again, and I could see his expression change. Every issue, every frustration, was pointing to the same place: the way work entered the business. There was no consistent intake process, so priorities were guessed, timelines were vague, the scope was unclear, and the team defaulted to seeking his approval simply because they didn’t have a reliable structure to follow.
The problems weren’t separate, they were connected and predicated on a single point of action. Fixing each issue one by one would keep him endlessly busy. Fixing the intake process would allow everything else to move more cleanly. This became the leverage point, the hinge that would move a very heavy door.
The pivot from effort to design
Once the leverage point was visible, the conversations could change. Tom started to see the business less as a collection of tasks and more as a series of systems, systems that had grown unevenly around him. He didn’t need more effort, he needed a different design. Beginning with a recognition that action was required, because the irritations of slow progress had now become too loud to ignore.
We talked about what a healthier version of the business would look like, not a perfect one, simply one where work began clearly, where responsibilities were owned, where decisions were made close to the work, and where he handled only the opportunities that genuinely required his insight. This wasn’t an abstract vision; it was a direction, and the beginnings of momentum.
Restacking what already exists
One of the most liberating moments for founders comes when they realise that the business doesn’t always need new resources. More often, it needs the existing resources restacked so the work can flow properly.
Tom didn’t hire anyone new, he didn’t buy new software, he didn’t restructure the whole organisation, he simply redistributed ownership and clarified expectations at the beginning of every project.
Over the following weeks, the pressures in the business began to lift. Conversations became clearer, decisions moved faster, and the team anticipated what needed to happen instead of waiting for instructions. And Tom gradually stepped into a leadership role that felt more appropriate for the company he’d built, one that gave him space to steer rather than constantly intervene.
Momentum returned in the way it often does in healthy businesses, steadily, quietly, and with a sense of things finally moving in the direction they were meant to.
What actually changed
Looking back on that period with Tom, the most significant shift wasn’t the new intake process or the clearer responsibilities. It wasn’t even the renewed pace of the business. The real shift, the one that made everything else possible, happened inside him.
For months, Tom had known what needed to change. He’d seen the signs and he’d felt the drag. He’d even sketched out ideas he never quite implemented. He wasn’t short of clarity or short of capability, he was simply not ready. The discomfort hadn’t yet mattered enough for him to act.
What changed wasn’t his understanding, it was his desire.
For the first time, the outcome he wanted became more important than the effort he’d been avoiding. The cost of staying the same finally outweighed the cost of change.
Once that happened, the steps that had felt overwhelming became surprisingly straightforward. Leadership often works that way. The heaviest work is internal. When a founder finally reaches the point where they want the future more than they fear the transition, the practical decisions fall into place with far less resistance.
The business shifted because Tom shifted, and Tom shifted because he was ready, not because he learned something new.
I recognised that change because I’ve lived it myself, the moment when knowledge and readiness finally meet. Until they meet, nothing happens. When they meet, everything does.
Returning to where the journey began
Whenever I think about Tom’s story, I go back to that Tuesday morning when he first sensed that something wasn’t quite right. At the time, he mistook the heaviness for a problem. In truth, it was the beginning of his readiness. Most leaders don’t act the first time they feel misalignment. They carry it for a while, they observe it, they tolerate it, some even thrive in it. They wait for a moment that feels significant enough to move.
That morning wasn’t the moment he changed anything, but it was the moment he began to see what change might make possible. And that’s where action truly starts, not with plans or processes, but with a recognition that the future you want is slipping further away if you don’t turn toward it.
Leaders only act when the outcome becomes something they genuinely want, not something they simply acknowledge. Tom didn’t move because his knowledge increased. He moved because his willingness did. The shift began the moment he stopped trying to work around the discomfort and started listening to what it was telling him.
Once that happened, the path ahead became clearer, and momentum returned, not because he pushed harder, but because he finally reached the point where he wanted what the change would bring more than he wanted to stay where he was.
That’s the real reset.
And it always begins long before a single practical step is taken.
Mark Jarvis
6x Founder | Interim MD | NED | Coach & Mentor
Author of:
The Very Best Business Handbook You’ll Ever Own
The 63 Point Business Blueprint
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Remember, there are only three types of people – those who make things happen, those who wait for things to happen, and those who talk about why things don’t happen for them. Which one are you?
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