Episode 747 - Take the Step Backward

In this episode, Phil explores a liberating truth that challenges the conventional "corporate ladder" narrative: real growth is rarely a straight line. Inspired by a conversation with colleague Sarah Jones regarding her ACL recovery, Phil discusses why the most effective leaders often experience detours, lateral moves, or even temporary steps backward. By shifting our focus from immediate vertical motion to the accumulation of "range" and "capacity," we can view plateaus and setbacks not as failures, but as essential periods of building depth.

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Transcript

Top performers in every field surround themselves with those who inspire them, who seek to build them up, and who push them to reach beyond their current limits. I'm Phil Buchanan, executive chairman of Cannon Financial Institute. To. I designed Monday Morning Mojo to provide you with a weekly spark, a push and motivational insight to live your best life.

Thanks for joining. Good Monday morning. It is Phil here with episode 747. Of Monday Morning Mojo. Last week, my colleague Sarah Jones and I were chatting about her rehab from ACL surgery. She was sharing some frustration that she was experiencing with her physical therapy as some of her treatments felt like she wasn't moving forward.

Rather, it almost felt like she was taking a step back. She then uttered a sentence that resonated with me on so many levels. She said, well, progress is rarely linear. She was so spot on with that comment and it led me to our conversation today. You know, we're often taught explicitly or implicitly that progress should look like a straight line.

Promotion after promotion, title after title each year, a little higher than the last, but lived experience tells us something very different. Real growth, be it personal, professional, physical, or even spiritual is rarely linear. It bends, it pauses, it sometimes even reverses. And often the move that looks like a step backward is actually what makes the next step a leap forward.

Today, I want to explore that idea and why some of the most effective leaders of today didn't climb straight up but sideways or even down in order to grow. You know, linear progress is comforting. It's predictable. It gives us a sense of control, but it quietly creates two dangerous beliefs. The first belief is that any detour equals failure.

Second, that forward motion must always be visible and immediate. Yet in reality, we know that growth works more like. Compound interest than a ladder. It sometimes builds unevenly. It often deepens before it expands. Periods of plateau or even regression or not signs that growth is stopped. They are often signs that capacity is being built underneath the surface.

Consider JP Morgan's, CEO and Chairman Jamie Diamond. Early in his career, diamond was widely seen as the heir apparent to Sandy Weill, then one of the most powerful figures in finance, and then abruptly Diamond was fired by Sandy Weill. From the outside, it looked like a career derailing setback, but what followed was not a frantic attempt to reclaim that lost position.

Instead, diamond pivoted. He became CEO of bank one, a role that at the time looked smaller and less prestigious. Yet that lateral move did something critical. It gave Diamond full enterprise responsibility. He learned how to run a complex organization end to end, how to fix broken systems, and to develop his own leadership philosophy.

When JP Morgan later acquired bank, one Diamond didn't just return to the big stage. He returned, transformed that so-called step back was what prepared him to become one of the most durable CEOs of his generation. Progress for Diamond didn't go straight up. It went down, it went sideways, and then forward with force closer to home.

We see this pattern constantly in leadership development. One example appears repeatedly in the leadership conversations captured in our other podcast, the Canon Curve. People who intentionally leave the fast track role to gain breadth, moving across functions, taking stretch assignments, or even stepping into temporary roles designed to build depth rather than prestige.

Often these moves are reported to feel incredibly risky. They don't come with immediate promotion or external validation, but they build perspective, relationships, judgment, the invisible assets that compound over time. Many of the leaders we respect most didn't accumulate titles quickly. They accumulated range.

This is an important lesson to the rising generations in our profession. The reason is they often tell me of their desire to grow and progress quickly. Now, while this is admirable, it can also be limiting over the long term. See, here's the deeper truth. You don't grow by moving forward alone. You grow by increasing your capacity to move forward.

Sometimes that means stepping back to relearn fundamentals. Sometimes it means moving laterally to see the system from a different angle. Sometimes it means sitting still long enough to integrate what you've already gained. Growth is not a straight line. It's a progress of becoming more capable than your current role requires so that when the next opportunity appears, you're already ready.

You know, the only real failure is confusing. Motion with progress or mistaking a detour for a dead. Monday Morning Mojo is production of Cannon Financial Institute, executive producer of Monday Morning. Mojo is Sarah Jones. Editing and mixing is done by Danny Bruder. Until next time, I'm Phil Buchanan reminding you to be a force for good.

Have a great week and thanks for being part of the Mojo community. I.