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STUCK!
How
businesses
can move
forward
By Russell Pearlman / Illustrations by Tim Ames
The problem
By most measures, stagnation has taken
over at many companies.
why it matters
Being stuck holds up innovation, growth,
and leadership development.
The solution
Leaders need to encourage risk-taking and
stick to a long-term vision.
As the longtime owner of a coaching practice in Chicago, Jamie Martin is used to working with mid- and senior-career executives eager to take on new professional challenges. It’s the nature of having a successful move up the ladder. That’s why she says she’s so surprised to see so many of her clients suddenly unwilling to quit their current roles. Even to try to get ahead. They don’t want to go to a new place, only to be laid off a few months later; meanwhile, they think their current managers could sabotage any internal moves. “More people are saying, ‘I don’t know whether to make a change,’” Martin says.
All of which is troubling enough for her, except she feels it’s part of a much more disturbing, systematic halting in the business world. “Everything seems to have come to a full stop,” she says.
Trapped. Wedged. Jammed. Stuck. Pick any synonym and you may find it applies to a pervasive holding pattern taking hold of nearly every aspect of corporate life—from its people to its leaders to its organizations. The contrast with the recent past couldn’t be more jarring. We’ve gone from the Great Resignation to workers quitting 33 percent less often than they did three years ago. Their bosses, all the way to the C-suite, are instituting hiring freezes despite lamenting how desperately they need new talent with new skills. A record number of activist campaigns have led to a record number of CEO resignations, creating even more troubling paralysis at the top.
And then there are the organizations themselves, similarly mired in muck. Organic growth, if you strip out inflation, is nonexistent at many firms. Even among the World’s Most Admired Companies, annual sales growth is often in the low to mid-single digits. Along with instituting hiring freezes, companies have cut back on bonuses and promotions. Many have pulled back on employee-training programs as well. A substantial number have given up on finding the next new thing. Indeed, as far back as 2022, only one-third of S&P 500 firms were spending any money at all on research and development. Last year, the CEO of one of the world’s largest retail brands admitted, “We are not as good as we should be.”
There are many reasons for the Great Standstill. A once-in-a-lifetime technology like AI can be exciting, but the wait to know its impact can paralyze careers and business strategy. Today’s daunting geopolitical crises do the same thing. All of which raises the obvious question: Are there any answers? We took a hard look at this strange “stuck” phenomenon, fully aware of the stakes at hand. “If we don’t push ourselves past these mental walls, we risk irrelevance,” says James Kane, a management consultant who tours the United States with the presentation, “Unstuck: From Reluctance to Resilience.”
Some would argue that being stuck is a natural state for people. While he was meandering around Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau mused that many men live lives of “quiet desperation.” But there’s plenty of evidence that individuals have more recently found a
new level of being stuck, at least professionally. The past few years have been filled with uncertainty, rapid change, and emotional exhaustion. Combine it with a tough economy and job market, and a form of “professional paralysis” takes over, says Lisa Birnbaum, a social worker who works with startup employees.
Clearly, much of this is showing up in the way people’s careers have slowed down. The current rate of people leaving jobs is just 1.9 percent, lower than the quit rate before the COVID lockdowns. Jasmine Escalera, a career expert at MyPerfectResume, calls it “the Great Stay.”
People might want to make a move, but they’re worried they’ll get laid off quickly from a new job if the economy falters. “It’s a workforce hesitant to make career moves in an unpredictable market,” she says. Meanwhile, internal movement has also gotten tougher. For all that organizations talk about developing skills and giving employees new experiences, inertia remains widespread. Many bosses block lateral moves—knowing that it might take months to find a replacement. Plus, many companies today are pausing career development programs because they’re uncertain about the business environment. “There are just fewer opportunities to move into a different role,” says Dennis Deans, Korn Ferry’s vice president of global human resources.
This angst would be easier to ignore if people were energized by their current roles. But only 31 percent of today’s employees say they’re engaged at work, the lowest level in 10 years, according to Gallup. Many workers say they just have too much work or too little encouragement. But perhaps most startling is that nearly half, or 46 percent, say they don’t know what’s expected of them at work. This “role-ambiguity saturation” leaves employees disengaged, unwilling or unable to take risks, says Dr. Yasmeen Coning, an organizational-behavior expert at Ogilvy Consulting. At the same time, a cadre of younger workers—having seen the workloads and pressures confronting their immediate supervisors—pass on being managers.
For people who don’t have jobs, the problem of being stuck can be even more acute. When Manohar’s contract with a Fortune 500 firm in New York ended last year, he faced a choice. He could get another gig as a tech quality-assurance expert or manager immediately, but he’d likely have to accept a lower salary. “There’s a nonzero chance I may never work in QA again,” says Manohar, who declines to give his full name since he’s still looking for a role. He could try something completely new, something out of tech, but he’d have to learn a whole new set of skills. For months, he’s been unsure about what to do. “It’s most frustrating,” he says.
Experts say there are a few things individuals can do to start feeling unstuck. Martin, the executive coach, says people should map out what they really like doing (and conversely, what they really don’t like doing). “Often, people don’t do reflection, they just jump jobs,” she says. Stuck employees also shouldn’t expect to make a giant leap immediately. Set one small goal for the week—whether it’s updating your résumé, having a coffee chat with a colleague, or simply taking a break to recharge, Birnbaum says.
Another tip: Speak up. Volunteering for projects is a way to shake up the work routine, acquire new skills, and develop relationships with colleagues you might not normally see. “Get known outside of your silo and team,” Deans says. At the same time, ask what other opportunities there are within the organization—many employees wrongly assume there’s nothing else they’re qualified for.
Organizations
One doesn’t have to go very far to see how the Great Standstill has spread throughout many organizations. S&P 500 companies grew revenues, on average, by just 4 percent in 2024, the lowest annual revenue growth of any year in the 21st century that did not have a recession—and much of that growth only came from inflation. And outside of a few sectors, no one seems to be in a rush to invent the next big thing. Only about half of manufacturers say they are engaging in innovation, according to a 2023 report by World Business Chicago. Organizations were granted 16 percent fewer patents by the US government in 2024 than they were in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
The stagnation is reflected in companies pulling back on promotions; about one in four employees got promotions in 2022, but that’s fallen to fewer than one in 10 last year. And despite all the talk from company leaders saying they need employees with new or different skills, the amount of money spent on training fell nearly 4 percent in 2024, according to Training magazine. Companies are bulking up their hiring of entry-level and other low-paying jobs, but they’re culling their midsections. Indeed, middle managers represented nearly one-third of all layoffs in 2023, according to job tracker Live Data Technologies. Maligned though they may be, middle managers can be the reason big initiatives succeed or fail. Their ability to train and motivate their direct reports is essential, experts say.
The stagnation creates more disillusioned employees, which in turn leads to more stagnation. “It’s like mold in the bathroom,” says Martin, the Chicago-based executive coach. Employee disengagement and attrition could cost a midsize S&P company as much as $355 million a year in lost productivity. Meanwhile, corporate decision-making can deteriorate.
It’s understandable during uncertain times that organizations would want to prioritize cost cutting, but many experts believe that the focus on efficiency has gone too far—that it has stifled a company’s ability to change. Some experts believe that firms are using performance metrics or incentives that actually punish the risk-taking necessary to innovate. That’s what Grant Duncan, a Korn Ferry senior client partner and consumer practice lead, found when he was working with a firm struggling to get new products to market. The company’s internal return-on-investment benchmarks were discouraging its innovation division from seeking big breakthroughs. “They’re trying again, but not before doing some internal innovating,” he says.
Indeed, organizations looking to become unstuck don’t necessarily have to cut, but rather can retool. Martin suggests that company executives do some self-reflection, asking themselves if they have been clear about goals and values. Then those leaders should encourage—and reward—employees for coming up with creative ways of solving problems. Avery, the management consultant, recalls how one media firm she worked with set up a test to see if a new way of presenting content would increase subscription revenue. The company knew it was a risk. And it didn’t work; the business lost about 2 percent of its normal revenues over a 14-day span.
But the experiment taught the firm numerous lessons about its consumers’ behavior and other roadblocks. Subsequent changes led to better test results and eventually to significant long-term gains. “Have a plan to put it back the old way, but reward people for taking the risk to find a better way,” she says.
>
PEOPLE
Leadership
communication skills can help conquer fears.
The way out
Stop Making Excuses:
Stuck companies always cite outside issues like the economy when the
cause is internal.
Protect Employees:
People want to know that if they
take calculated risks, it’s OK to fail.
Analyze Incentives:
By focusing on short-term rewards, firms can discourage employees from developing new skills or innovating.
NEXT: PEOPLE >
LEADERS
Back in 2000, an article in Harvard Business Review stated that about 70 percent of change initiatives at big companies fail. While that figure has since come into question, no one seems to dispute that trying to get a company to do something different is hard. And no one seems to question that leaders should encourage, set a vision, and get the firm to pursue it.
But these days, experts believe, many leaders are not even attempting big changes. Many CEOs are in reactive mode, stuck in the weeds, putting out fires caused by geopolitical uncertainties, employee management, and other forces heaped upon them. Three-quarters of CEOs and C-suite executives do not feel “very equipped” to lead effectively amid all the major changes happening around the world, according to one 2024 survey. A whopping 71 percent of CEOs tell Korn Ferry that they sometimes feel like imposters. Bosses, it seems, feel as stuck as many of their employees do.
Technology, which in theory could eliminate much of this malaise, has, ironically, become one of the major reasons CEOs feel stuck. They feel compelled to be making massive investments in technology, such as artificial intelligence, even if they don’t have a clue as to whether those investments will pay off. “The technology could change everything, or it could just be a way to write emails faster,” says Dave Rossi, president of Korn Ferry’s Global Industrial Market practice. Still, the perception is, if your firm doesn’t spend massive time and money on it, then a competitor will—and wipe you out. Digital transformation takes a lot of time and effort, which in turn drains precious corporate resources from other projects.
Every move leaders do make, big or small, is often scrutinized in internal employee group chats, emails, and social media. Employees, as it turns out, feel empowered to openly criticize any changes these day, and that can freeze CEOs, who can get a bad reputation overnight. “They don’t want to be the guy who makes the mistake and have it pinned on them,” says Rebecca Avery, a management consultant who works with many media firms. Unable to get the company or board on the same page, many are just leaving now. Some 202 chief executives of global companies left their jobs in 2024, a 13 percent jump from 2023 . It’s possible too that boards recognize how stuck their handpicked executives have become and are asking them to go.
Many CEOs today may feel they answer not to one boss (the board chair) but several (the board chair and activist investors). Globally, the volume of activist campaigns has skyrocketed, with 243 launched in 2024, the highest number since 2018, according to investment bank Barclays. It’s not just the same activist investors antagonizing C-suites, either. Forty-five first-time investors launched campaigns in 2024. Sometimes campaigns can jar a leader out of a morass, but more often than not, they take up valuable resources and time—time not spent on product development, motivating employees, or strategic planning. The usual result: stagnation. David Dotlich, a Korn Ferry president and senior partner, says at least five CEOs he works with have recently hesitated to suggest good growth ideas for fear of missing short-term earnings: “So they don’t embark on those ideas. They’re afraid.”
Interestingly, experts say that working on leadership-communication skills can go a long way toward conquering those fears. Conveying information more effectively can clear up misunderstandings and help projects move forward, Avery says. Experts also suggest moving away from being a so-called “task CEO” who needs to sign off on every detail. Top leaders, while needing to understand how things get done, should be more focused on setting the firm’s overall vision and mission. Effective CEOs are “poets,” says executive coach Marshall Goldsmith: They think big and prioritize impactful actions over small, potentially trivial victories.
The way out
Be Optimistic:
Nearly every problem has a solution. Encourage yourself, and teams, to
find answers.
Stay at 30,000 Feet:
Sweating every detail often leads
to stagnation.
Embrace Uncertainty:
You didn’t become a leader by settling for the status quo. Take chances.
>
ORGANIZATIONS
NEXT: ORGANIZATIONS >
PEOPLE
It’s a workforce hesitant to make career moves.”
“
Some would argue that being stuck is a natural state for people. While he was meandering around Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau mused that many men live lives of “quiet desperation.” But there’s plenty of evidence that individuals have more recently found a new level of being stuck, at least professionally. The past few years have been filled with uncertainty, rapid change, and emotional exhaustion. Combine it with a tough economy and job market, and a form of “professional paralysis” takes over, says Lisa Birnbaum, a social worker who works with startup employees.
Clearly, much of this is showing up in the way people’s careers have slowed down. The current rate of people leaving jobs is just 1.9 percent, lower than the quit rate before the COVID lockdowns. Jasmine Escalera, a career expert at MyPerfectResume, calls it “the Great Stay.” People might want to make a move, but they’re worried they’ll get laid off quickly from a new job if the economy falters. “It’s a workforce hesitant to make career moves in an unpredictable market,” she says. Meanwhile, internal movement has also gotten tougher. For all that organizations talk about developing skills and giving employees new experiences, inertia remains widespread. Many bosses block lateral moves—knowing that it might take months to find a replacement. Plus, many companies today are pausing career development programs because they’re uncertain about the business environment. “There are just fewer opportunities to move into a different role,” says Dennis Deans, Korn Ferry’s vice president of global human resources.
This angst would be easier to ignore if people were energized by their current roles. But only 31 percent of today’s employees say they’re engaged at work, the lowest level in 10 years, according to Gallup. Many workers say they just have too much work or too little encouragement. But perhaps most startling is that nearly half, or 46 percent, say they don’t know what’s expected of them at work. This “role-ambiguity saturation” leaves employees disengaged, unwilling or unable to take risks, says Dr. Yasmeen Coning, an organizational-behavior expert at Ogilvy Consulting. At the same time, a cadre of younger workers—having seen the workloads and pressures confronting their immediate supervisors—pass on being managers.
For people who don’t have jobs, the problem of being stuck can be even more acute. When Manohar’s contract with a Fortune 500 firm in New York ended last year, he faced a choice. He could get another gig as a tech quality-assurance expert or manager immediately, but he’d likely have to accept a lower salary. “There’s a nonzero chance I may never work in QA again,” says Manohar, who declines to give his full name since he’s still looking for a role. He could try something completely new, something out of tech, but he’d have to learn a whole new set of skills. For months, he’s been unsure about what to do. “It’s most frustrating,” he says.
Experts say there are a few things individuals can do to start feeling unstuck. Martin, the executive coach, says people should map out what they really like doing (and conversely, what they really don’t like doing). “Often, people don’t do reflection, they just jump jobs,” she says. Stuck employees also shouldn’t expect to make a giant leap immediately. Set one small goal for the week—whether it’s updating your résumé, having a coffee chat with a colleague, or simply taking a break to recharge, Birnbaum says.
Another tip: Speak up. Volunteering for projects is a way to shake up the work routine, acquire new skills, and develop relationships with colleagues you might not normally see. “Get known outside of your silo and team,” Deans says. At the same time, ask what other opportunities there are within the organization—many employees wrongly assume there’s nothing else they’re qualified for.
>
LEADERS
The way out
Think Big, Big Picture:
Ask yourself what two to three things you really should focus on.
Don’t Just Look Up:
There might be lateral career
moves that could be rewarding.
Talk to the Boss:
Asking about new challenges can
be a low-risk step with high returns.
NEXT: LEADERS >
OUT OF THE
QUICKSAND
Go into “mini-retirement.” Reach out to
150 people. Pivot to a new business completely.
Three professionals recall how they got out
of being stuck.
Pressing Pause:
Allison
Jackson
Taking the leap:
Mike
smith
coming back from a layoff:
Jeff
Le
Three years ago, Allison Jackson, then the director of corporate communications at a Big Four firm, found herself demoralized by post-pandemic exhaustion. “I felt like I was burning out—I was ambivalent, and not caring about anything, and feeling overwhelmed,” she says. This marked a major shift from her typical highly engaged attitude. At the same time, she was grieving the upcoming departure of her son to college.
Jackson weighed her options: Should she consider a new role? Or perhaps go into consulting? She decided to take an eight-week sabbatical. Her peers excitedly inquired about what fabulous adventures she would undertake—traveling? Volunteering abroad? Expanding her side business? An extended bike quest? They were surprised to learn that she planned to do, well, nothing. “I just wanted to sit with my thoughts, and really think through what was happening and how I was feeling,” she says. The problem, she thought, was always having something to do. So for a couple months, she’d simply stop doing anything.
For eight weeks, she took walks—not terribly long ones, because it was the dead of winter in northern New Jersey. She began to think of her time off as a “mini-retirement.” At first, she was thrilled—then she grew worried that she wouldn’t want to return to work. Early on, she didn’t. Mini-retirement was fun.
But as time passed, she increasingly missed having a sense of purpose, not to mention her coworkers and the structure of a daily job. By the end of the eight weeks, she felt ready to shift out of mini-retirement. “It really enabled me to appreciate what I’d stepped away from, and come back more motivated than ever,” she says. She powered through for two more years.
Mike Smith is likely among the best salespeople in the Southeast. After decades selling business products to companies, he had risen to regional vice president of a distribution company, which was like running a company: He managed profit-and-loss oversight of sales across the region, including 10 offices. And yet after years of this, Smith felt stuck. “Truthfully, I was getting kind of bored,” he says. At professional lunches, top distribution reps would ask him whether he’d ever thought about striking out on his own. “I hadn’t,” he says. He had a solid paycheck and young kids at home who needed college funds.
That calculus changed when a peer was promoted into a higher role, leaving him boxed in. “The writing was on the wall,” he chuckles. “It was a perfect storm.” His circumstances at home
had grown more stable: His kids were now teenagers with fully funded college accounts, and the family’s just-in-case account would cover more than six months under duress. He put out feel-ers to find clients, and got immediate bites. He then built up a roster by calling business contacts and chambers of commerce, offering to teach seminars and courses, and quickly built a business around teaching sales techniques to staff and managers. With that confirmation, he took the leap to founding his own business, SalesCoaching1, which trains sales personnel and identifies rising talents.
These days, Smith picks and chooses clients across the wellness and medical-manufacturing industries; they frequently fly him in to train their teams. In retrospect, he realizes that he could have made the jump much earlier, though he preaches fiscal conservatism to others considering leaving their corporate roles: “Definitely don’t quit your job until you have revenue-producing clients.”
Jeff Le’s career was flying high: He held a dream job at a fintech company in Washington DC, leading global public policy and external affairs. Then came a January 2022 Zoom call where he was let go, due to corporate restructuring. It
was not performance related. “That’s the tough piece when
it comes to that sort of news,” he says. He had exceeded expectations, but his whole team was eventually laid off as
well. His wife was pregnant.
He spent his first week of unemployment avidly scanning job listings. It did not go well. “I was just sad,” he said. So he turned off his laptop and, for two weeks, focused on daily runs, meditation, and catching up with old friends. Then he focused on the little matter of getting back to work: He made a giant list of organizations, along with 150 people to speak to over the next month—five per day. This plan led to 10 interview rounds, and a handful of final-round interviews… but none went his way. He realized that getting in the door is about ability, references, and effort, but that final rounds are often largely related to dynamics beyond one’s control. “The hardest thing about final rounds is realizing that it’s not about you—it’s about other factors,” he says.
Finally, in his seventh round of final interviews, he received
an offer to be the director of government affairs at a tech company with government-agency contracts. “My feelings,
in order, were relief, excitement, and gratitude,” Le says. He happily worked in his new role for over two years, before recently landing another dream job. He thanked all 168
people who spoke with him. “That’s what it takes.”