We are very good at the next thing.
The report goes out and we are already on to the proposal. The proposal lands and we are already worried about the presentation. The presentation goes well and we are already behind on the thing we didn’t do while we were preparing for the presentation. We live in a culture that treats completion as a starting gun, not a finish line. Getting an A is expected. Anything less is noticed, dissected, and improved upon. The A itself? We barely look at it before we move on.
I want to suggest we are doing this wrong.
Not just for morale — though it matters for that too. But because the relentless forward motion without pause is actually a bad strategy. You cannot assess what worked if you never stop to notice that something worked. You cannot build on a win you didn’t acknowledge having. And you absolutely cannot sustain yourself — or the people around you — on a diet of pure problem-solving with no recognition that problems are also being solved.
Here’s what I’ve learned: sometimes the biggest win of the week is that nothing went terribly off the rails. That the meeting was tense but stayed civil. That the deadline was impossible and you made it anyway. That someone on your team who has been struggling showed up and did the thing. These are not small things. We treat them as small things because we are so busy looking for the A that we forget to notice we passed.
Celebrate does not have to mean confetti and a speech. It can be as small as a moment — a pause, a breath, a genuine “we did that” before moving to the next item on the agenda. It can be a handwritten note. It can be saying out loud, to yourself or to someone else, “that was harder than it looked and we handled it.”
What it cannot be is nothing. Nothing is the default and the default is burning people out, including you.
A few places to start:
Notice the non-disaster. At the end of the week, before you make your list for next week, ask: what didn’t fall apart that could have? Name it. That counts.
Mark the milestones, not just the finish line. If a project runs six months, find three moments inside it worth acknowledging. The finish line is too far away to be the only reward.
Let people know you saw it. The single most underused leadership tool is specific, timely recognition. Not “great job” — that’s wallpaper. “I saw what you did in that meeting when things got heated and I want you to know I noticed.” That lands. That stays.
Celebrate your own too. Privately if you prefer. But somewhere, somehow, register that you did a hard thing. You don’t have to post it. You just have to let it count.
The leaders who last are not the ones who never stop moving. They are the ones who know when to stop, look at what they’ve built, and say — out loud, even just to themselves — that was worth something.
That is worth something.
Julie
Have feedback on anything in this newsletter? I take compliments and complaints! You can reply or DM me on Facebook or LinkedIn! What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Let me hear them!