I recently came across Helge Tennø’s piece, Why Do Organizations Get Stuck?, and one line jumped out at me:

“When organizations get stuck it’s often because they are limiting the information they are making available to make decisions.”

It’s painfully true. We often think “stuck” is about lack of resources or competitive pressure, but more often, it’s self-inflicted. We close ourselves off—sometimes without even realizing it.

How We Box Ourselves In

The trap is subtle. We lean on what’s worked before, we listen to the same voices in the same meetings, and we keep our decisions within a comfort zone. It’s not malicious, it’s just easier. But over time, those little limitations add up until the organization feels… immovable.

It’s like driving with blinders on. You can still move forward, but only in a very narrow lane. And you miss all the signs, opportunities, and warnings outside your field of view.

A Different Way to Stay on Course

This is where something I call the Steering Guide comes in. Think of it as your organization’s compass—a way to keep moving, but also to make sure you’re seeing the full landscape as you go.

A good Steering Guide:

• Opens up your field of view so you’re not just working from the same limited data.
• Balances old and new thinking, so you’re not clinging to the past but not throwing it away either.
• Makes sense of things together, instead of letting decisions happen in silos.
• Lets you change direction without guilt, because agility is baked into the plan.

How to Start

The Steering Guide works because it keeps five key elements in play at all times: widening your lenses, balancing today’s needs with tomorrow’s opportunities, making meaning together, building turn signals into your work, and anchoring decisions in the “why.” It’s not a static document—it’s a living habit. The trick is weaving those elements into your daily conversations, decisions, and planning so they’re second nature. That’s where the real change happens.

So instead of treating the Steering Guide like a lofty idea, here’s how you can start embedding those elements right now, without overcomplicating things:

Widen Your Lenses – Don’t just rely on quarterly reports or top-down updates. The Guide helps you actively pull in stories from the field, customer feedback, and frontline observations. Those things that don’t always make it into the “official” narrative.

Balance Today vs. Tomorrow – Most organizations over-index on what’s urgent right now and ignore early signals about the future. The Steering Guide enables you to actively ask: Are we exploring what’s next, even when today feels urgent?

Make Meaning Together – The Guide helps you share the right, raw information widely, not just polished summaries and bring diverse people together to interpret it.

Build “Turn Signals” into Your Work – Big changes fail because we wait too long to course-correct. The Guide helps you create checkpoints where the only agenda is: “Do we still have the right destination? Are the conditions different now?”

Anchor Every Move in the ‘Why’ – People can handle change; what they can’t handle is change that feels random. Every decision, big or small, can leverage the Guide to connect the dots between what’s happening now and where you’re trying to go.

If you keep looping back through these elements—widening your lenses, balancing today and tomorrow, making meaning together, checking your direction, and anchoring in the “why”, you’ll find you don’t stay stuck for long.

Getting unstuck isn’t about working harder or making bigger bets. It’s about widening your perspective and making space for new signals. The Steering Guide just gives you a way to do that consistently, without losing your sense of direction.

If your team feels like it’s moving through molasses right now, maybe it’s not the workload or the market. Maybe it’s the blinders.

About the Author

Trained as a behavioral scientist and customer-centricity expert, Andrea Belk Olson helps companies operationalize corporate strategy through understanding mindsets and behaviors. She is the author of three business books, including her most recent, What To Ask: How To Learn What Customers Need but Don’t Tell You.

She is a 4x ADDY award winner and contributing writer to Entrepreneur Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Rotman Magazine, World Economic Forum, and more. Andrea is also an entrepreneurial adjunct instructor at the University of Iowa and TEDx speaker coach. 

More information is also available on www.pragmadik.com and www.andreabelkolson.com.