Feeling stuck at work
The phrase "feeling stuck at work" might seem like a passing mood or an individual mindset, but for today’s managers, it’s increasingly becoming a system-wide alarm bell. Across sectors, we are seeing elevated staff turnover, quiet quitting, productivity plateaus, and a lack of strategic agility. For business leaders, the challenge is clear: how do we renew momentum and rebuild energy in a way that is sustainable, inclusive, and transformative?
This article explores the deeper dynamics behind workplace stagnation and offers a radically human-centred approach inspired by the work of Jim Ewing and Executive Arts. Through unique frameworks such as the Insight Cycle, Stucco, TransforMAP, and Implemento, Executive Arts supports leadership teams to reframe problems, surface unconscious blocks, and move towards aligned, adaptive cultures.
Recognising Organisational Stagnation
When individuals or entire departments feel like they're treading water, the impact is rarely isolated. Financial performance stalls. Cultural fragmentation increases. Teams disengage. Yet the signs of stagnation can appear deceptively subtle:
Repeated strategic re-alignments with little traction
Staff expressing uncertainty about purpose or direction
Decision paralysis in executive teams
High absenteeism or presenteeism
Projects slowing due to cross-functional disconnects
These symptoms reflect what we might call a breakdown in workplace coherence. As Ewing put it, most organisations are trying to solve exterior problems without resolving the internal stories that drive behaviour.
Beyond Performance Metrics: Understanding the Inner Landscape
Good leaders are used to metrics. But when those indicators level off, what's missing is often invisible. Executive Arts uses diagnostic conversations, mapping tools, and embodied leadership practices to explore:
How organisational culture may resist or block change
What assumptions are shaping leadership behaviours
Whether key people are navigating hidden transitions
What patterns of avoidance or denial are present
How emotions like fear are being managed
These hidden dynamics affect team dynamics, employee engagement, and organisational change readiness. Crucially, they also influence how confidently leaders can make decisions under uncertainty.
Releasing Your Teams from the Grip of Fear and Routine
Feeling stuck at work is often less about the absence of options and more about habitual thinking. Our clients tell us:
"We know we need to change, but we’re unclear where to begin."
"We’re all very busy, but the energy feels flat."
"It’s as if we’re playing not to lose instead of playing to win."
Executive Arts works with these real and raw leadership insights by helping organisations design environments for exploration. Through the Stucco and TransforMAP frameworks, we help identify emotional loops, surface difficult questions, and challenge outdated beliefs. These are practical, facilitated interventions that shift the system.
The Learning Edge: Where Change Becomes Possible
At the heart of Ewing’s method is the concept of the "learning edge" — the point where rational planning meets emotional reality. Most organisations make plans and then ask people to catch up emotionally. At Executive Arts, we reverse the sequence:
First, we invite the difficult conversations
Then, we reframe challenges as design opportunities
Finally, we generate experiments and learning actions that fit the emerging story
This shifts organisations from compliance-based performance management to co-creative culture evolution.
From Resistance to Regeneration: Addressing Organisational Anxiety
Human systems resist change for good reason. Most workplaces have multiple hidden commitments:
The need for certainty
The drive to maintain role-based identities
The impulse to avoid conflict or exposure
We help senior teams discover and understand these commitments. Using tools such as Implemento, we structure reflective decision-making that uncovers what’s needed now, what to stop doing, and what is ready to be born.
The result? Leaders feel more resourced. Teams feel more heard. Strategy becomes lighter, more fluid, more intelligent.
What Makes the Executive Arts Approach Different
Most change initiatives aim to fix the organisation. We focus on how the organisation sees itself. Our interventions are:
Highly adaptive and responsive to lived realities
Designed to navigate rather than suppress emotional complexity
Built on deep facilitation, not top-down instruction
Structured to bring clarity from confusion, not just process from chaos
We believe that strategic renewal cannot be separated from personal development. The organisation changes when its people do.
If you would like to work with us, tell us about the challenges you are facing and how you think we might help: