The pull back. The call forward
As work and life resettle after the pandemic, many leaders feel a quiet tension between old habits and new possibilities. This essay explores the pull back to familiar ways of working—and the call forward to more human, sustainable leadership. It offers a reflective lens on the future of work, behavior change, and purposeful transformation.
At some point in the last three years, you probably said, “I’m never going back to how I worked before the pandemic.” Fast-forward to today. Much has been written about the future of work and how we are in the early days of designing a new era of flexibility, freedom and individual agency. Much less has been acknowledged about the gravitational pull back to the old ways—the old you—as many of us get used to being in the world with one another again. I’m not just talking about CEO mandates to return to the office. I’m talking about the pull that each of us—no matter our role or organization—is feeling, as we make everyday decisions about how to live and work today.
What gravitational pull back to the old ways are you feeling?
As anyone who has gone through intentional transformation knows—whether as an individual, a team or a company—making lasting behavior change is hard. It takes creativity and bravery to break from the norm—even norms that are clearly not working anymore. And it takes strength and stamina to create new ways forward, in the face of the gravitational pull to the status quo.
What is calling you forward?
Last week in Lisbon, we posed these two questions to leaders of business, venture, startups, innovation, culture and government. While they came from different fields, countries, ages and identities, many of their answers echoed one another:
- The pull back to be always moving from one meeting to the next, one plane ride to the next; the call to be in the moment and in your body.
- The pull back to an identity staked on your work; the call to define yourself outside of your title, outside of your company.
- The pull back to perfectionism; the call to hold things a little less tightly and to be gentle with yourself and others.
- The pull back to individualism and what’s right for “me”; the call to recognize oneself as part of a community and to consider the needs of the collective.
- The pull back to be buttoned-up and “all business”; the call to welcome more of your world—family, frustration, laughter—into business.
- The pull back to a model of leadership that is 24/7, where suffering is a badge of commitment; the call to slow things down and create the space to kindle creativity and wonder.
- The pull back to focusing on winning; the call to focus on the effects of the win, as much as on the victory itself.
- The pull back to prioritizing short-term performance; the call to long-term thinking and commitments that make greater impact.
Calling our systems and cultures forward
Just as we are grappling with these pulls as individuals, so, too, are companies. The pull to the old ways, backed by legacy operational systems, policies, mindsets and processes, is strong. In SYPartners’ work with business leaders all over the world, we hear about the force of this gravity. And some, to be sure, want to snap back to the way things were. But others are working to make purposeful choices about what to leave behind, what to continue and which calls forward to explore. Some emerging themes:
- A pull back to leadership as held by a single, iconic leader; a call to leadership as a collective act—simultaneously humanistic, courageous, political, economic, and creative.
- A pull back to sustainability as a constraint; a call to sustainability as fueling business innovation and the next century of growth.
- A pull back to reassert control; a call to share power among the constituents connected to a business—customers, employees, investors, and partners.
- A pull back to operate from a place of scarcity; a call to operate from a place of possibility.
You may have heard some of these calls yourself and may even agree with them conceptually. But moving them from idea to reality—that’s the challenge. One guest in Lisbon offered an anecdote: He set an audacious mileage goal for himself to run in one year. He started out by running marathons but realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t sustainable. Instead, he committed to logging a certain number of miles every week, no matter what, and has stuck with it.
Similarly, when working with leaders to transform their organization, culture or operating systems, we at SYPartners do the hard work of knitting together a big vision and bold moves with the smaller, quieter, everyday actions and experiments on which change is built. And, yes, it is still hard.
I’m taking this advice personally, too. When I try to make space for what’s calling me forward, I slow myself down. I walk with others—literally and figuratively—or I go for a swim in the ocean. I move out of my head and into my body. Step by step, stroke by stroke, I move into the future that calls me.
As the times get more urgent and the needs more pressing, I encourage you to pause and ask yourself: What gravitational pull are you feeling? What old ways are reasserting themselves? Do you want to return to them? And, when you really listen, what is calling you forward?
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