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The Owner's Room: When Clarity Isn't Enough (And You Still Feel Stuck) · Integrity at Scale™

• Hey, hey, Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here, and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Thank you for being here. Thank you for joining me. You are here for an owner's room special. One of my favorite things to do all about when clarity isn't enough and you still feel stuck. So this is really about the moments when everything should, theoretically should be working. Maybe your systems are tight, maybe your team is super clear, you've done everything e os that you can think of, and it's like running well, but you feel stuck or maybe uninspired or like you're lacking motivation or I don't know, you just aren't feeling creative like you want and need to, you're really sort of feel like you're missing out almost. Sort of like, um, think about like if the engine is running, but you go to shift your car into gear and it just, you know, makes that grinding noise, something like that. So today's owner room is never, it's not about fixing anything. It's not about solving or fixing or teaching or anything like that. It's really just about naming and talking about and sort of grappling with or processing through things. I really just wanna talk about what happens when clarity doesn't fix your funk, or what happens when you can't even access the clarity to figure out what the funk is about the funk, not the good kind of funk either. So I will say before we go further, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. If this resonates with you, the more that you subscribe and like the more that people who are like you will find it and it will likely also resonate with them. If you don't know already. The owner's room is really just me asking myself out loud so you can hear them a series of questions and then I answer them. I do not think about the questions in advance. I pick some and then I just riff. So who knows where any of these things go. At the end of the question portion, I have started doing a scenario. So I will talk through, I'll read out loud a brief scenario that has likely happened for many of you that are listening. And then I will also riff from that and give you some thoughts about how I might address or approach or think about or whatever with regard to the scenario. So let's do this, shall we? We'll do five questions and then the scenario, just to give you a heads up. Number one, what does clarity look like for you when it's working? How do you know when you're clear? You know what's really funny is that I don't even know if I know when I'm clear. I know when I have an absence of fuzziness, so it's less like I feel crystal clear and more like I don't feel confused or fuzzy or frustrated, or some other feeling. It's almost like the absence of a, of a, a mix of feelings associated with stuckness, you know, stagnation, which kinda seems like a non-answer, but I think the reality is that you can only know lightness with dark. You can only know good with bad, sort of like the having the juxtaposition of the things is what makes it come to life, for me anyway, that's what makes it come to life. Yeah. But I think maybe if I go further with that, then having the absence of these, whatever the, the, you know, culmination of feelings is the, the multitude of feelings is whenever I'm in stuck or stagnation mode, there's definitely a sense of ease. There's definitely a sense of like, oh yes. Like, um, a freedom that comes with things. So as I'm talking, I'm actually realizing that there is more to it. There is freedom. There's a sense of, almost like, um, ability to expand. Like anytime I'm in an open hallway in a hotel, I wanna sprint down the halls. Like I feel this sort of urge to just take off and sprint and like leap through the halls. Only when I'm by myself. It's not usually a group endeavor, it's just like, I wanna sprint. It's like wide open and asking to be ran through, you know. There's sort of the same feeling when I do have clarity. And so even thinking about recently developing this Living Practice Framework and that coming to life for me, I feel that urge to sprint, like I'm like fucking ready to go. So I take back what I started with, which is that I don't feel clarity. I feel a lack of fuzziness. Sorry, I didn't mean to lie to you, but I did on accident. I really do feel clarity, and it's in the form of wanting to sprint and wanting to run and wanting to take off and realizing that I usually it's, I don't have time to do the things that I really want to do because I'm working on other things, whatever those other things might be. Like I want to spend more time in certain areas because I feel so crystal clear on whatever they might be. That's usually clarity for me, so. I, that was like a full 180 man. I told you I don't know what happens in these. Like who the fuck knows? Your guess is as good as mine. Shit. Okay, let's move on then. Question number two, what are some times when you've had full clarity but still couldn't make a move? If that is not so relevant right now, I don't know what is. This is honestly to me, ownership almost all the time. I remember saying to somebody a long time ago, he was a group practice owner friend. This is years ago. I said something like, I feel like being a business owner is sort of a constant pregnant pause. You just like constantly, you know you're waiting and I don't know if you've ever been pregnant. I've been pregnant. to term three times. And the entire time I remember feeling like I'm just gonna be pregnant forever. I'm gonna be that woman that they found with a calcified baby in her stomach. It's just never gonna come out of me. This is, this is my life. This is it. That's how business feels sometimes, where the things that you want to see happen, the things that you're working towards, they, ugh, I just want them to come to fruition. And I don't mean like I wanna make this much. I mean, the things that I'm building and the direction that we're going and the vision that I have, like I'm ready for it to be here tomorrow. And the reality is that it can't be for any number of reasons. You know, A lot of reasons. Sure, that's not what this question is about. There are many times that I have had clarity and I haven't been able to move by nature of not having systems in place, being way at or beyond capacity, not knowing how to get out of the role that I was currently in and slash or not being in a place that I could delegate some of the responsibilities within my role to another role, whether that's like financially I couldn't bring somebody on, or we're not gonna have a quarterly meeting until next month, and I'm ready right now to make a move. But that's not something I can do that's, that's not something I'm comfortable doing on my own. I like to do it with my leadership team, just as an example. And so there might be things where I'm like, I'm ready to fucking change this. And I have to wait, and there's that pregnant pause, you know? And even right now, after developing, like I said, this Living Practice Framework, I am fucking ready. I have just so many ideas, and not only like concepts that I wanna bring to life, but also ways that I wanna sort of teach and train around how stuff lives together. And I can't. And pregnant pause. I'm waiting. I need to hire somebody. I need an assistant to help with some very key things. And so. Always like constantly throughout business ownership, whether it's again, group practices or consulting, there have been a lot of moments of clarity and not space to make the move. To further that, there's two types of clarity that are coming to mind for me. One is having clarity when you are actively in the process of doing something else, like you are sort of in the thick of the work and you're enjoying it and then you realize maybe something big where you're like, oh fuck, like that's what we need to do. I need to go here. And then you can't make a move 'cause you're in the thick of doing all your work, you know? But the second type of clarity from my perspective is. When you are, you know, something's off. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, you're like, this isn't it? Something's not right. And you're, you're trying to like, figure out what it is and maybe you don't have like the, the full sort of space and time to just sit and like be in the, I would say like kinda a little bit of stuckness, you know, to, to let it like soften and like melt away so the clarity comes out. But when you do reach that point of feeling clarity, then you're typically still not able to make a move because you haven't had the clarity prior to right then. And so you can't preemptively set the systems up so that when you did reach that point, you'd be able to step away from whatever it is that you were doing to whatever it is that you want to do ' cause you didn't know what that was gonna be. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, you didn't have this, you, you couldn't have had the systems in place in advance without having the information about it what it was gonna look like. So those are two, just little tangents. I think there's like two types. One sort of clarity is exciting and like in the middle of doing fun things and the other is, I mean exciting when it happens, but like less exciting when it's coming out of stuckness because you know who likes to feel stuck. So I think that's it for that. Question number three, what's your relationship to momentum? I love this question. Oh my gosh. Do you feel like you're only safe in quotes when you're moving? Hmm. I think I used to only feel safe when I was moving. I think that that's probably true. I've always been busy. People talk about like societal expectations around busyness. That's not the fuck it for me. Like I'll be busy on my own. I don't need, and I, I know, I know, I know societal expectations are internalized, et cetera. But I'm saying like. It. I think in my case it's genetic. I, it's funny too, 'cause I see it in my second born. My point is. I think that I used to only feel safe when I was moving. At this point, I like some stillness and I, maybe it's because my life is just busy and full. I like the moments of quiet. I like solitude. I like stillness. I like to be able to just stop and let things sort of, ah, wash over me, sort of like water off a duck's back, you know? I like to be able to breathe. I don't know when that changed either. Um, maybe therapy. Who the fuck knows? I don't know. But it changed at some point in my life. So that's the safety piece, but the relationship to momentum. Hmm. What's your relationship to momentum? That is such an interesting question. I have literally never thought about this in my life. I mean, I think my relationship to it from one perspective is like I've, I view it positively. It's kind of like vague and lame, but maybe that's my entry into this conversation is like, I think I view it positively. I view momentum as a positive thing and my experience with momentum as positive. What I will say is that historically speaking, when I shifted into momentum, I really have trouble slowing myself down and sometimes stopping, and so. I have a lot of systems and structure in place now that I don't need to rely on myself entirely to do that because I still don't think I'm good at it. I'm still not good at it. That's not an, I don't think, like I'm straight up, not good at that still, but I recognize it more. But I like the experience of momentum. I like the speeding up and the going and the moving. I like that feeling. The slowing down is always a little bit hard and again, I would not say that I only feel safe when I'm moving at this point in my life, although I think at some point earlier on that was the case. Yeah, I think that's it for that question. I think I'm good. Uh, question four, have you ever self-sabotaged a well-oiled system because you needed to feel something? Oh, oh my god, that's rich. Uh, no, not on purpose. I do turn over stones though, so whenever I get like. I'm not gonna say bored, but I think there's something about if I get involved in a system that I'm not normally a part of and I'm like going through it and I notice sort of a hanging thread, or maybe there's a hiccup in a step, damn it, like now I'm off. Like I'm gonna pull on the thread. I'm gonna start to turn over the stone. I wanna like look and figure out like, wait, whoa, whoa, what? What hiccup is that? Like what's happening? And then the whole thing might come unraveled. But again, that, that maybe that's actually tied in with the momentum piece is that I have to stop myself and then I say, hang on, this isn't my system. I'm gonna ask this person who's responsible for it. IE why I love my accountability chart. I have to remove myself because I will do that thing, not as a way of self-sabotaging. So I don't necessarily agree with that language for myself. It's as a. Like I, I'm gonna say borderline neurotic, if not like a full fledged neurotic tendency for figuring out where the issues, how do we fix them? It feels less like it's because I need to feel something and more like it's because I can't let it go. My preference is that it's just well run. If it's running well, I wanna leave it the hell alone. But if I'm engaging and there's a hiccup or two or three, you know, then I'm gonna like, uh, I wanna get my hands in there. I wanna like dig into it and figure out what the hell is going on. I would be really interested to ask my leadership team this question about me. I would wanna know like, do you ever see me sabotaging a well-oiled system because I need to feel something that seems like I need to feel something. I don't think the answer is yes. I don't think they would say yes, I'll have to report back on what they say, but yeah, okay, so my answer is no. I do not think I've ever self-sabotaged a well oiled system because of needing to feel something. I have sabotaged systems by nature of pulling threads and turning stones over. But my other thought is if I'm pulling a thread and it unravels, that's a fucking problem in and of itself. Like, there's something else that needs to be fixed here. We need a, well either fix this thread or like re-sew the sweater so it doesn't have a bunch of fucking dangling threats everywhere or clear the path so there's not any stones everywhere to step on a trip. Okay. I'm moving on. Fifth and final question and then the scenario. Have you ever confused clarity with certainty? What happens when you try to force clarity to give you emotional relief? Mm. Have I ever confused clarity with certainty? I don't think so, because again, my tendency is to flip over stones. When I feel clear, I feel clear. And I feel confident in what I'm clear in right then. But I'm not somebody who says anything with certainty, like hardly ever, at least long term, other than we're all gonna die. You know, that's like, of course that's a given, like duh, you know? But. Not like the system is gonna stand up forever. No. I don't fucking know. Who knows? The system works right now for what we're doing and who we are and our intentions and our values and our people, and our clients and our community. But in six months or a year, or three years or whenever, I don't have any idea. So I, I don't think that like with almost anything in life, I, I don't tend towards certainty. That's not a tendency that I have. I do seek clarity though. Um, I'm not afraid of a lack of clarity. I don't feel, hmm, what's the word I'm looking for, I don't mind the mess of a lack of clarity, I think that's what I'm trying to say. So I like that grappling to achieve clarity. It's really about achieving clarity. It's not about achieving certainty. 'cause again, I don't think most things in life are certain. But the follow-up question or the related question, what happens when you try to force clarity to give you emotional relief? I mean, it inevitably fucking fails. Like I'm trying to like force clarity it feels like, um, I feel like I can't exhale all the way. That's what it feels like. Like I'm stuck. Like, you know when you can exhale all the way and you, you feel it in your body, your whole like torso, diaphragm, whatever. It just empties out. That's how clarity feels. Like, oh, thank God I can breathe. When I don't have that. I wish I could force clarity. I can't. And for me, for the love of God, I hate, I just, I so like love- hate this about myself. It's that I have to have clarity on more than one level. Like it has to be in alignment in my entire body, my entire physiology, all of my system, logically, emotionally, relationally, structurally, I have to. Think it has to make sense to me. That's when I can exhale. So being told what to do, for example, or like, here's an answer, that's not a sigh of relief for me, that's like really important information for me to then grapple with. So then I can achieve my own clarity and then ugh, and then I can exhale entirely. So I can't, when I try to force it, it just never works. And I'm not somebody who, if you tell me an answer. I will take it at face value, but it doesn't just translate to me where I'm like, oh, I totally trust that this answer is gonna hold up for me and what I need. I cannot do that. That's where like the grappling, you know, comes into play. So I think I'm answering the question. I think that that basically wraps it up. Let's do the scenario. Shall we, shall we? Alright. Here is the scenario for you, a practice owner, IE you or I has done their work. EOS is implemented, and I'm gonna go with EOS and another business structure because I love EOS. So EOS is implemented. Team meetings are tight. Metrics look good. People are in the right seats, and the right people in particular are in the right seats. But you still feel restless, you feel bored, or maybe you're kinda low key irritable all the time. You're considering blowing it all up, not because it's broken, but because you don't feel lit up by it anymore. What is that feeling? Is it grief? Is it boredom? Is it a deeper call to shift vision or is it just a byproduct of doing the hard work of stabilization? I'm probably not a great person for the scenario because once something is built, I feel done with it. Like once it's built and clean, I'm not really interested anymore. I'm not interested in the maintenance of things like that. That's when I I start to feel stagnant and stuck and a little bit like, ugh, restless, or I want something else to like, I need another space to have this creative expulsion of energy. I wanna be able to, to build something and think about something and grapple and go big and do all these other things like I need a, I need an expression for that energy. So from my perspective, it's like, uh, maybe that's it. Like if you're a visionary type, it might be, or a founder, it might be that you're a legit founder. Like you founded something, you created it, you brought it to life, and now you're ready to shift. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that. I I think that's reflective of potentially your temperament or your personality or just what you're designed to do, or what you feel designed to do, or what you've been socialized to do, whatever your belief system is around that. So my thought is, maybe it's just about like you're ready to do something slightly different. The feeling about blowing it all up, I think that's interesting. I don't know if it's because I specialize in couples when I was doing clinical work and it was, I specialize in high conflict couples, like couples on the brink of divorce, and so divorce was not, like it, you know, people coming in to see me and they would say the D word. It's like, yeah, yep. Cool. Like that, you're literally here for that reason. Like, I would expect you to be maybe actively considering divorced by the time you get to me. So it doesn't, it wasn't scary, you know? And I still don't think it is. I think for a lot of the couples that I was seeing, and I promise this is relevant, but for a lot of the people who come in and they're in that space, like reaching the point where you're considering divorce, for example. Is often not always, there's, I'm saying this with broad brush strokes, but a lot of the times it was people who really tried to make it work and they couldn't figure out how. They couldn't figure out how to have the discussions. They couldn't talk about their past without shit going hella sideways, you know? There was so much built up resentment. There was so much pain, so much anger, and so much grief. Why wouldn't you consider divorce? And so my thought is if you're considering blowing it all up, not because it's broken, but because you don't feel lit up by it anymore, why couldn't it just be that you need to create things? Like why does it have to be that something gets entirely blown up? Why does it need to be that the answer is to get rid of something and instead it could just be, oh, this is a whole ass project that I'm wrapping up and I wanna start another one, but maybe I don't know what it is yet. And so that is some of the transition then is if you are considering blowing it up, but it's going well. I mean, I think I would wanna know like, what is it about this that I wanna blow up? Do I have tendencies of self-sabotaging? Again, I do not have those tendencies, but if you do have those tendencies, that might be something to consider. Am I bored by the consistency and routine of it? Do I need a different role within my practice? Do I wanna step away? Do I only want five hours a week of being in the practice and the rest of my time I wanna, you know, go knit sweaters. I don't fucking know whatever you wanna do, go learn French, go talk to birds. It literally doesn't matter. My point is, what if it's just okay that you wanna do something else? And that doesn't mean that you have to do anything about what currently is like, it doesn't have to be scary. If you have a feeling or thought about blowing something up, it could just be a sign that you're done with this part of your life and you wanna shift and do something slightly different. Again, this is assuming all the right people are in the right seats. EOS is working well, your team meetings are tight, et cetera. If that was the case and you're just like, I might, I think I'm gonna blow this all up, like I don't know if I wanna do this anymore. I would bring that up at my next quarterly full day meeting. I would be a VTO item. It would be an issues list item, and I would say, I think I'm done, y'all like, I don't, I don't know. And again, this is like what you wanna do. So I'm saying this from my own perspective. I don't have any idea what it's like for you or how you might be feeling, but you know the, my thought is if you're considering selling or if you want it to go well, but you just don't want as much to do with it, or you maybe wanna see if your employees wanna buy it, or you wanna keep 51% and sell 49% or whatever. Whatever the case is, that would literally go on my issues list. It would be a conversation with my team. It's not their decision, so that wouldn't be the point, but it is to talk about the issue is that I'm considering blowing this all up. Like I'm having really big feels about the practice right now. I. I personally am an external processor, so when I am talking about something, just by nature of talking, it's helpful. Like it's shit's getting fleshed out or the knots and the muscles are getting massaged or the logs are clearing out from the log jam. It is not that all the problems are solved, but being able to discuss helps things start to move within me, and then I can come to different conclusions and realizations. I have different insights. Sometimes it's tied to my own shit that I need to work through. My point is it doesn't necessarily mean that you exactly want to blow something up. It could just be reflective of the needing a deeper shift in your life. It might very well be wrapped in grief or boredom. It could be any of those things too, where it's like, God, like I always do this thing. You know, why am I, why am I that person that I build something and I'm just done with it like this isn't it? This must not be it if I still feel this restlessness. Again, maybe the restlessness is just a sign that you are a person who likes to build things and let them go, and by let them go, I, I mean, potentially sell them sure, but also just like let other people run them and then you step away and build something else. And let somebody else run that, et cetera. Isn't that entrepreneurship anyway? I always think like, isn't that what entrepreneurs do or they, they build shit and then they, they leave. Some people build shit and stay, but I'm not, some people. I think that does us for today. I think that's about it. I appreciate you being here. If you do feel like your backend doesn't match the front end of your business. I am a 12-year-old boy sometimes back in, he, he start giggling in the background. Uh, you've like, if you're wanting structure, reflection, support, et cetera, consider joining the Inside the Living Practice membership. So it's really monthly q and a monthly live training, a cohort of private Facebook group, a portal with a bunch of fucking resources and help with the structure, the reflection, the support, the building, the business, the EOS stuff. All of it you can find in there. So, oh goodness. Thank you so much for being here with me. I really hope this was helpful. I adore your space and time and energy. I know how meaningful it is, and I'll see you next time. Peace out. Bye.