How to Turn More Commitments into Action in 2025

Like me, you’re probably familiar with the “uh-oh” feeling; that uncomfortable sense of disappointment often accompanied by a physical knot in your stomach. For leaders and high-performers, “uh-oh” moments rear their head when you miss the mark and realize there's a gap between something you committed to achieve and what you actually achieved.?

For some, it’s about missing business targets, losing a client, or lacking quality time with family. For others, it’s about the gap separating the leader they are from the leader they aspire to be–and the choices they’ve made (or didn’t make) that hindered their progress.

That “uh-oh” feeling is quite common this time of year, especially if you’ve made time to reflect on what you achieved and where you missed the mark. It’s a healthy process and, although uncomfortable, a useful feeling of unease. After all, discomfort often sows the seeds of meaningful change.

In that spirit, as we approach 2025, let’s reflect a bit and then pivot to explore how to make it THE YEAR for you to significantly advance your leadership and your cause.

Consider:

How did you perform relative to your intended results, goals, and performance targets this year??

Where exactly did you hit the mark and where did you fall short??

What needs to change? And how do YOU need to change?

Most importantly: What are you willing to DO about this in 2025?

If you’ve discovered some dissonance, this isn’t the time to beat yourself up. The gap is rarely attributable to missing knowledge or capability. Most often, it's due to the failure to convert intentions and commitments into action. Let’s explore this more deeply and then move to practical solutions you can apply.

The Commitment-Choice Gap

Think about commitments as big-picture determinants. They set your firm’s course through core values, business strategy, financial structure, annual plans, and the like. Commitments are made infrequently and are designed to facilitate alignment to a stated direction and plan. While they have tremendous impact on an organization’s long-term success, commitments have relatively low perceived immediate value.

Choices, on the other hand, are tactical day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute selections, usually followed directly by action. The choices you and your staff make today, tomorrow, and next week have a high perceived immediate value and relatively low perceived long-term value.?

Primarily because of the discounted perception of long-term value, choices are often fueled by fear: you don't want to lose a customer, so instead of heading in a direction that reflects your core values and overall strategy, you make a choice—and take (or avoid) an action—that temporarily lets you off the hook. But choices are subject to the law of compounding: They accumulate every day and over time, ultimately determining whether or not you accomplish your commitments.

For example, if a manager’s choice today is to avoid a difficult conversation with a client who is verbally abusive to staff, over time the compounding effect could result in high performers quitting, which works against the organization’s commitments. Let’s visualize these moments of choice next.

Three Paths of Choice

Every time you make a commitment or contemplate honoring one, you stand at this three-way intersection:

In these moments, which occur every day, the path you select determines the direction and rate of compounding–toward or away from the intention of the commitment.

When you choose Denial and Inaction (Red Path), you’re

• Refusing to acknowledge problems
• Maintaining status quo despite clear signs of needed change
• Hoping issues will resolve themselves

When you choose Comfort Zone Actions (Yellow Path), you’re

• Taking limited, low-risk actions
• Stopping short of necessary steps and full solutions
• Making choices to provide temporary relief but not addressing root causes

When you choose Doing the Hard, Right Things (Green Path), you’re

• Making decisions and taking actions fully aligned with commitments
• Accepting short-term discomfort for long-term gain
• Following through despite challenges

The Cost of Poor Choices?

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve probably heard me say that I’ve never observed a business where the sustained growth rate of the company exceeded the personal growth rate of the people running it. And if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing—there's no way around it.

When you choose denial or your comfort zone over growth, you’ll likely feel temporary relief. While that's certainly a seductive reward to reinforce the choice, the longer-term costs are significant and enduring:

• Growing problems continue to grow and your staff increasingly feels the pain
• Stagnated growth, burnout, and growing disengagement
• Unintended consequences and hidden costs ripple through your organization

The challenge of meaningful achievement is to overcome the seductive rewards of denial and comfort zone actions enabling more hard, right thing choices. Over time, these compound in alignment with accomplishing your commitments, closing the gap.?

Here are four areas to evaluate and address to improve the odds you’ll make more hard, right thing choices in the year ahead:

1. Your Professional Neighborhood

Decades ago, my Grandpa Ben gave me crucial advice as I looked to purchase my first home: “Mark,” he said, “never buy the most expensive house in the neighborhood, because there's only one way the less expensive homes can affect your property value over time.”

Years later, I realized this wasn't just real estate advice. If you're the most experienced or accomplished person in your professional networks and peer groups, you've become that one expensive house. Your value will diminish over time due to influence from the others in your neighborhood.

The solution is to deliberately surround yourself with people who are better than you, who make you a little uncomfortable, and who challenge you to grow. If you find yourself contributing a lot but reaping little from your professional groups, any advice you get will likely embody others’ fears—and potentially validate some of your own—dragging down your value over time. Instead, surround yourself with individuals who have already reached the next level; they'll help you stretch and grow. Choose your path wisely:

Denial and Comfort Zone Choices:

• Stay in comfortable, “safe” peer and networking groups
• Maintain current peer relationships
• Avoid ego-challenging environments

Hard, Right Choices:

• Seek and join groups with more accomplished, successful members
• Find more mentors with perspective far beyond your current level
• Put yourself in growth-oriented situations that force you to stretch the bounds of your comfort zone

2. Your Team’s Quality & Fit

Many well-intentioned leaders harbor employees who reduce the value of their teams and organizations, even if they provide some short-term rewards to the leader (including allowing them to avoid hard conversations) and to the firm. Here’s a simple truth to help you suss out who should be a part of your organization:

High performers love accountability; low performers hate it. Clear accountability dramatically reduces a low performer's ability to practice their well-honed craft of work avoidance and obfuscation. Even better, it forces them to either get with the program and perform or choose the path of least resistance and leave. Choose your path wisely:

Denial and Comfort Zone Choices:

• Retain underperformers to avoid conflict
• Avoid difficult conversations
• Tolerate mediocre performance and unacceptable behavior

Hard, Right Choices:

• Upgrade staff
• Lean into crucial conversations and course-correction coaching
• Establish, maintain, and create accountability for higher standards

3. Your External Professionals/Advisors

"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur!" – Red Adair, American Oil Well Firefighter?

As Red Adair famously said, the most expensive choice you can make is to hire an amateur.?

Equally dangerous? Working with "feel-good" advisors who won't push you or challenge your assumptions. As author and uber-coach Marshall Goldsmith said, "What got you here won't get you there." Just like your networks and peer groups, you must periodically upgrade your external advisors to sustainably grow and scale. Choose your path wisely:

Denial and Comfort Zone Choices:

• Remain with familiar but unchallenging professionals and advisors
• Accept current standards
• Choose advisors who validate, but don't actively challenge you

Hard, Right Choices:

• Seek challenging perspectives and more sophistication than you think you need
• Raise expectations continuously
• Work with professionals who demand and enable growth

4. Your Personal Leadership Development

Finally, you must address your limitations as a human being and as a leader. Your ego is your psychological immune system; it exists to protect you and your sense of self. As such, your ego works to bolster your self-image—rationalizing and even making excuses or blaming others to help you feel whole. When you're constantly attempting to keep up with others or worrying about what they think, both rooted in ego-based fear, it’s easy to lose sight of your own goals and aspirations.

Fear is a powerful driver of human behavior. Research has shown that we weigh a negative outcome twice as heavily as a positive one. Studies have reliably demonstrated that when offered the option to take a particular bet, people begin to agree to it only when the potential for gain becomes twice the magnitude of the potential for loss.

The implication of this research is empowering: To take action in the face of fear, we have to raise our level of inspiration to twice the level of our fear to literally override fear's tendency to hijack our choices.

With that in mind, it’s time to take a hard look at the sources of your fears and the ways in which you can increase your inspiration, such that you’re motivated to act in your organization’s best interest. Choose your path wisely:

Denial and Comfort Zone Choices:

• Focus solely on business operations
• Avoid feedback
• Allow ego and fear to drive decisions

Hard, Right Choices:

• Invest in personal growth
• Actively seek hard, constructive feedback
• Identify the fears that hijack your choices and double down on inspiration to overcome them

Conclusion

"The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist." -- Zig Ziglar

To close the gap between your commitments and your results in 2025, consider the following three questions:?

Which of the four areas above is the biggest obstacle to your progress?

Which hard, right choices are you avoiding?

What's the cost of staying comfortable or in denial—to your firm, your staff, your family, and you personally?

Next, choose one of the four areas to meaningfully address next year. Commit to specific hard, right actions. Then create clear accountability measures to ensure you follow through.

Remember: The long-term costs of delay or inaction ALWAYS far exceed the short-term discomfort of making hard, right choices. Always!

The story of your impact as a leader and the ultimate success of your organization will be written one hard, right choice at a time–compounded over time.

If you need help, I’m here. Don’t hesitate to reach out for support.

========================================================

More Options to Accelerate Your Leadership Growth and Success…

• Follow Mark on LinkedIn
• Learn about Speaking and Workshops
• Buy Books: Activators – A CEO’s Guide to Clearer Thinking and Getting Things Done -and- Creating a Culture of Accountability
• Contact Mark to Explore Coaching