People talk about “being in the flow” as if it’s some zen productivity state. That’s nice, but what I mean by flow is much more practical: things moving. From left to right, down the funnel, across the team. Progress happens because work doesn’t get stuck.
Think of it as a river. Once you’re in, you go downstream. You can nudge the current, steer it a little left or right, improve its path, even create a side creek. But you keep moving. The problem is, in business we’ve built a culture where sounding smart often means pointing out why something won’t work (justifying decisions, failures etc is in the same bucket). That breaks the flow.
BTW, subscribe to my newsletter, there’s even more to read.
Take a typical B2B marketing meeting. Someone says: “Let’s run a TikTok campaign to target mid-size hotel owners.” Answer A: “Yes, and what if we split-test half on TikTok and half on LinkedIn to see whether which platform works best?” That flows. Answer B: “TikTok ads are for teenagers according to recent research and CTR is declining.” That’s a dead stop. The project doesn’t move, nothing gets tested, and someone feels clever for having saved budget, while progress stalls.
Great marketers don’t win by finding flaws. They win by finding ways to keep ideas in motion and getting them executed. Sometimes the original idea isn’t great (in fact often original ideas from boards and senior managers really suck), but if you try and understand the sense, roll with it, test it, and iterate, you discover better versions along the way. It’s about building momentum (and revenue), not scoring brownie points in meetings.
This isn’t about groupthink or blind optimism. Improving an idea is welcome; killing it in the name of being clever is not. The role of a good manager is to spot the difference, and to build a team of people who instinctively take the idea, evolve it, and channel it further down the river.
In practice, this means resisting the urge to interrupt, delay, or pull people backward. Small examples matter too. If someone is halfway down the stairs, don’t call them back with a quick question. Let them finish, and catch them on the return. Breaking personal flow is as costly as breaking team flow.
Because progress rarely comes from perfect ideas. It comes from momentum. Stopping ideas and work is easy. Steering it forward is harder, but that’s where growth happens.
So next time you’re in a meeting, ask yourself: am I helping this flow forward, or am I throwing rocks in the river? Because fault-finding is the lazy “expert’s” version of progress. Real progress is flow.
