The First Signs of Life

Learning to Notice What Is Forming Before It Looks Like Progress

There are seasons in leadership when direction takes shape through what endures.

You have a working sense of direction, but you know it has to be tested in practice. You pay attention to how it shows up in conversations and daily work. You notice what resonates and what falls flat. You make room for what seems to hold, even before it is fully defined.

Even with that sense of direction, movement does not come right away.

For a while, the work feels sluggish, if not stalled.

Most days, little feels different. The same questions return. Conversations circle familiar ground. Progress is uneven and hard to sense. It can feel as if nothing is moving at all, even when the work continues.

And then, over time, something small begins to form. Not because a decision was announced or a plan finalized, but because understanding shows up in modest, everyday ways. A phrase gets repeated. A choice gets made with less explanation. Someone names a priority without being prompted.

A moment arrives that is easy to miss unless you are paying attention.

Scripture names this pattern quietly. A seed in soil. Jesus says, “The seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” Growth begins hidden. Then it is noticed.

In organizational learning, these early signs of life signal the formation of shared mental models. Over time, people develop a common understanding of purpose and priorities.

When that understanding is present, decisions rely less on instruction. People begin making decisions that align because they understand what matters and why.

The work begins to carry itself, lightly at first.

I did not recognize the moment at first. It looked ordinary.

Two team members were working together on basic, foundational work. The kind of work every organization has to do. Nothing about it would have stood out to someone passing by.

They were not doing it to meet an expectation or follow a script. They were doing the work carefully, with attention and pride, as if it mattered.

What caught my attention was not the task itself, but the way they were approaching it.

As we talked, one of them mentioned plans further down the road. Not with confidence or certainty, but as if the future we have been naming was beginning to feel real.

Nothing about the interaction was out of the ordinary. But something in me settled.

This was not my language echoed back to me. It was not compliance. It was participation.

The vision no longer belonged to one person.

That is the moment leaders rarely name, because it does not look like success. Not yet. It looks small. It looks unfinished.

But it is the beginning.

Not when a vision is declared, but when it is discovered together. Not when people follow, but when they contribute. Not when the future arrives, but when its first traces appear in quiet, everyday work.

The vision has taken root.

And it is growing through people who helped form it.