Recently, I sat down with a client who was feeling worn out and concerned. Over a coffee, he described how anxious and tired he was. He told me it felt like he was constantly spinning plates - always dreading the sound of one crashing to the floor. His words: “it feels like we just lurch from crisis to crisis.”
He carried the weight of the business on his shoulders, believing he was the only one really pushing forward. Others were doing “enough” but not much more, and it left him feeling like he was pushing a rock uphill, alone.
When I asked him:
❓What’s your mission? → He eventually said “to avoid going bust.”
❓Do you have clarity on the finances? → He admitted the numbers he got were often wrong and he didn’t trust them unless he’d double checked everything himself.
❓What are your top 3 objectives this year? → He couldn’t name them without giving at a fair bit of thought.
No clear forward looking mission; no clear numbers to help him understand where they were; no clearly defined objectives that spring off the page.
And as a result - no action plan, no clear sense of purpose and direction, and variable confidence in some of the team around him.
We spent three hours (not the planned 20 minutes) working through some simple but powerful discovery questions:
· WHY – Why did you set up this business? Why do you strive every day?
· WHO – Do you have the right people on the bus? Are they self-starters, mission-led, capable? Do they ease your burden or actually make your burden worse through needing to closely manage them?
· WHAT – What does good look like to you? What would you look back on in 12
months and be proud you achieved? What are the next steps?
By the end of our chat, nothing was actually fixed of course (that would be way too unrealistic). But something definitely had changed.
He felt a lot lighter. More optimistic. More in control. Because he left with clarity.
👉 Clarity of his purpose.
👉 Clarity of what needed to be done.
👉 Clarity about where he needed support.
My takeaway: Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to pause, sit down, and rediscover your clarity. Whether that’s alone, with a trusted colleague, with your senior team, or with someone external — don’t underestimate the value of stepping back to reset your compass.
Because clarity can often be the most powerful antidote to chaos.
