Working hard isn't the same as moving forward

Good morning. At this point in the year, most teams are deep in execution. The pace hasn't eased. The list hasn't shortened. And if you asked most people how things are going, they'd probably say: fine. Busy. Getting through it.

That's not necessarily a problem. But it's worth asking: is the work moving in the right direction, or is it just moving? And is the team doing meaningful work, or have they been so far into it for so long that nobody's stopped to check?

Six months is long enough for a lot to shift without anyone registering it. Priorities that were clear in January have quietly evolved. Roles have stretched to absorb what needed covering. Projects that made sense at the start of the year are now carrying more weight than they warrant. And somewhere in the team, there are things that haven't been said, small frustrations, unanswered questions, adjustments that would help but haven't been raised, because nobody's created the space for them.

This is the edition about creating that space. Not as a once-a-year exercise, but as a deliberate mid-year practice.

There's a name for this moment. The messy middle. It's the stretch between a start that had energy and a finish that's still too far away to pull you forward. The beginning of the year had intention. Q4 will have urgency. Right now is neither, which is exactly what makes it harder to navigate. Most teams are in it. The right response is not a new push. It's orientation.

The things that drift at mid-year tend not to arrive dramatically. They settle in gradually, which is part of why they go unaddressed.

You might recognise some of these:

None of these are crises. But left unaddressed, they compound. The team keeps moving, but with drag.

The instinct, when energy is flat or pace has slowed, is to inject something. A new initiative, a reframe of the goal, a push. That impulse usually comes from the right place. But it's often the wrong response.

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, in their research on what actually drives engagement and creativity at work, found something that challenges the conventional view: the single biggest driver of how people feel about their work on any given day is whether they made progress on something meaningful. Not recognition. Not autonomy. Not perks. Progress.

The reset conversation isn't about motivating a team that's lost its way. It's about removing the drag that's making progress harder than it should be, and making the progress that has happened visible. Both of those things are more important than a new push.

This isn't a formal review or a performance conversation. It's a recalibration, a chance to ask the questions that have been sitting below the surface, and to make decisions as a team about where to point the energy for the second half of the year.

Run it with your team, or run a version of it in individual one-on-ones. The questions are the same either way.

A reset conversation gives them somewhere to land that isn't a team meeting about something else entirely.

Opening the conversation:

"I want to use this time to check in properly, not on how the work is going, but on how we're going as a team. I'm going to ask some questions that might feel a bit unusual. I'd rather have an honest conversation than a comfortable one."

When naming what's accumulated:

"I've noticed [specific thing]. I haven't raised it because I wasn't sure it was the right moment. I'm raising it now because I think it's worth a discussion instead of continuing with blinkers on."

When inviting what hasn't been said:

"What's something you've been carrying that you haven't found the right moment to raise? I'm not going to be defensive about it, I want to hear it."

When making decisions about what to stop:

"Looking at everything on the list, what's one thing we could stop doing, hand off, or significantly reduce, and genuinely not miss? I'm looking for real answers, not polite ones."

"When you think about the 80/20 of our actions and effort, what are the things delivering little or no return on our effort?"

One of the most effective things a team can do in the second half of the year is name, each month, one area where they want to genuinely move. Not a new project, a theme. An area of capability, relationship, or process that gets deliberate, visible attention for the month.

The discipline is small and the overhead is low. At the start of the month: name the focus and why it matters now.

During the month: reference it briefly in check-ins, what's moved, what's getting in the way.

At the end: spend ten minutes noting what shifted. What's different because of the attention you gave it?

The research on progress and engagement is clear on this: people who can see that their work is moving, even incrementally, sustain motivation at a different level than those doing equivalent work without that visibility. Recognition doesn't need to be formal to land. It just needs to be specific and real.

The other thing this practice does is give the team a consistency anchor on the ordinary days, when motivation is flat and the work feels routine. Motivation is useful for starting things. Consistency is what carries teams through the messy middle. Waiting to feel ready or energised is a workable strategy in January. It does not hold up in July. What holds up is the small, reliable return to something that matters: the named focus, the check-in, the end-of-month reflection. Not dramatic. Just consistent.

Some teams pick a focus together. Some leaders set the theme based on where they can see the most leverage. Either works. What matters is that it's named, it's visible, and at the end of the month, someone notices what moved.

A reset isn't just about redirecting energy. It's also about reducing the demands on it. The second half of the year will have its own pressures, many of them unpredictable. Creating space for those now is not pessimism. It's good operational management.

This is the question worth asking explicitly: what's currently on the team's plate that doesn't need to be? Not what's hard or uncomfortable, what's actually low value relative to what it costs? A commitment that outlasted the reason for it. A process that nobody would defend if they thought about it. A meeting that would not be missed.

Removing one real thing, not trimming the edges, but actually stopping something, creates more focus than any amount of prioritisation effort applied to a list that's stayed the same size.

The second half of the year doesn't need to be a push. It needs to be pointed in the right direction, with enough room to move.