Gradually. Then Suddenly: The Truth About How Leadership Actually Changes

Written by Dr. Suzy Burke

I often think about the phrase gradually, then suddenly. Hemingway used it to describe how someone goes bankrupt.

But it doesn’t just apply to finances. It applies to leadership. To culture. Even to our own growth.

We tend to think transformation happens in big, visible moments.

A bold decision. A major reorg. A breakthrough result.

But most leadership breakthroughs, and failures, don’t happen in moments.

They happen in patterns.

A culture rarely collapses because of one bad decision. It weakens through a series of small ones:

• A concern left unspoken 
• A standard quietly lowered 
• A tough conversation delayed

Each choice is easy to justify in isolation. Together, they create a system no one intended.

Vaughn’s research on organizational failure calls this the normalization of deviance: small departures from standards that gradually become acceptable.

I saw this with a leadership team that insisted they valued candor. No one argued. No one disagreed. Meetings were efficient.

Also… unproductive.

No one challenged the strategy. No one surfaced risks. Decisions looked aligned—but they weren’t.

Nothing was obviously broken.

Until performance stalled.

It felt sudden.

It wasn’t.

The pattern had been there all along.

The same dynamic drives growth.

A CEO I coach started asking herself a simple question at the end of each day: Where did my thinking help me, and where did it hold me back?

No dramatic overhaul. No new strategy.

Just a small shift in attention.

Over time, she noticed when hesitation masqueraded as “thoughtfulness.” When overthinking disguised itself as “preparation.” When self-doubt slowed decisions that didn’t need more data, just more courage.

As a result of this self-awareness, she became clearer, more decisive.

She recognized the pattern and interrupted it.

That’s the uncomfortable truth about leadership:

You don’t get the outcomes you intend. You get the outcomes your patterns produce.

So the question isn’t: What big move will change everything? It’s: What pattern am I reinforcing right now, one small decision at a time?

Because what feels gradual today is exactly what will feel sudden tomorrow.