When More Effort Isn’t the Answer & Why Strategic Leaders Know When to Pivot
A few weeks ago, I was in a mastermind session with a group of powerhouse women leaders – sharp, experienced, and deeply committed to their mission. What started as a casual check-in quickly turned into a conversation that resonated with many of us: Why is it that when something in our business isn’t working, our first instinct is to work harder and push more?
We all laughed, knowingly, because we’ve all done it. Push a little more. Stay up a little later. Revisit the offer, the funnel, the messaging…again. It’s not that we’re afraid of hard work; quite the contrary. It’s that we actually have deep trust in our work ethic. It’s served us so well…until it doesn’t.
There’s a fine line between perseverance and force. Lately, I’ve been sitting with a question I’ve seen come up again and again, in myself, in clients, and in other high-performers: At what point are we trying to force a square peg into a round hole?
The hard truth is that sometimes the peg isn’t the problem; it’s the hole that has changed. Markets shift. Clients evolve. We evolve. Life happens. However, we often continue to use the same offers, positioning, and strategies that worked well and felt aligned a year ago, and wonder why things feel off. “It worked before… why isn’t it working now?” “Maybe if I give it more time, more energy, more of myself…”
But sometimes, more effort isn’t what’s required. Sometimes, it’s less.
When we continue to push a strategy that no longer fits, out of habit, fear, or sheer determination, the cost is more than just underwhelming results. The real cost is energy depletion: the kind of exhaustion that can’t be fixed with a good night’s sleep. It’s creative stagnation, when nothing feels inspired because everything feels like a grind. There is a misalignment between our intentions and what the business is actually delivering. It’s detachment from the mission, the audience, and sometimes, ourselves. When that happens, we shift from vision to urgency, from strategy to scrambling, from leadership to burnout.
There’s a dangerous narrative in entrepreneurship that says if you pivot, you’ve failed. But that’s not leadership. That’s rigidity disguised as resilience. The best leaders don’t cling to outdated strategies; they stay attuned to the present moment, adapt, and respond accordingly. They ask different questions: What’s no longer working, and why? What’s actually needed now? Where is my energy most aligned? What does my community need today? Sometimes, the wisest, most strategic move isn’t to do more, but to pause and reassess.
Before a pivot, there’s something even more essential: space. A pause to regroup, to reconnect with the bigger picture. A pause to realign with your values, your vision, your people. A pause to reimagine what success could look like from here, not from where you started.
You can always come back to the square peg later. It might make sense again in a different context, or become part of something new entirely. But for now, your energy is better used finding what fits today. Not just for your business, but for you, the leader who has to carry it forward.
When you give yourself permission to pause and pivot, you create space for the right ideas to emerge. The aligned ones. The timely ones. The ones that are ready to gain real traction. You stop forcing, and you start flowing, and the people around you – your team, your clients, your community – feel the difference.
So, if something in your business feels heavier than it should… if your intuition is whispering that something’s off… if your energy is drained and your output is grinding to a halt… that’s not failure; that’s feedback. Sometimes, the most strategic thing you can do is take a step back, allowing you to move forward with clarity, confidence, and genuine momentum.
If this is where you find yourself right now, I’d love to hear from you. These are the conversations I love having with clients, conversations that begin with a pause, not a plan. You don’t need to have it all figured out; you just need a space to start.
