Don’t Just Return—Re‑Imagine

The month has that familiar “wall of heat” feeling—the kind of transition that sneaks up on you and suddenly everything shifts. Temperatures start to wobble, school calendars snap back, projects wake from their nap, and we all feel the sharpened‑pencil energy of fresh notebooks and new intentions. Even if you’re not headed back to school, this is a collective threshold. It’s not just a change in weather; it’s a new cadence in teams, families, and organizations.

For collaborative leaders and facilitators, thresholds are invitations. They’re a chance to pause, make meaning, and choose what comes next—on purpose. This month, we’re leaning into Transitions as our theme and spotlighting Purpose‑to‑Practice (P2P) from Liberating Structures as our featured activity. Think of P2P as a way to move from inspiration to implementation—an arc that starts with why and ends with what we’ll actually do (and how we’ll know we did it).

Below, you’ll find seven sections to help you harvest summer’s clarity, mark this threshold with intention, and translate purpose into aligned action. Each section blends mindset, facilitation moves, and practical tools you can use with your team—or solo—right away.

Transitions Are a Mindset, Not a Moment

We love to circle dates on calendars and declare, “Today is the change.” But most transitions don’t flip like a light switch. They’re more like a sunrise—slow, layered, and a little different for everyone on the horizon. Treating transition as a mindset, not a moment, helps leaders stay grounded when the pace around them accelerates.

That mindset begins with readiness. Rather than waiting for “official” milestones, we can build the muscle of scanning, sensing, and choosing. What’s shifting in your market, your team, your own energy? What’s knocking that you haven’t invited in yet? Readiness doesn’t mean constant vigilance; it means having a way to notice and name what’s emerging so you can respond deliberately.

It also helps to distinguish change from transition. Change is what happens to us—budgets move, tools update, org charts redraw. Transition is the inner reorientation that lets us enter a new era with clarity. You can live through a lot of change and still be in the same era. A true transition—identity, strategy, direction—asks for intention, ritual, and practice.

Finally, remember that predictable cycles (back‑to‑school, fiscal year, Q4 push) are a gift. When everything else feels stormy, these patterns are life rafts. You can design around them—using them as natural places to reflect, reset, and recommit—so that the less predictable waves don’t throw you as far.

Begin (Again) With Purpose

Purpose is the first of our facilitation competencies for a reason. It anchors everything that follows: your principles, who’s involved, the structure you’ll use, and the practices you’ll commit to. In seasons of transition, purpose is both compass and ballast.

Start by articulating purpose in plain language. What outcomes matter now, and why? How will progress help real people? Keep it simple enough that your team can repeat it without notes. Then ask, “If this purpose is true, what becomes non‑negotiable in how we work?” Those non‑negotiables become your principles—filters for decisions big and small.

Purpose also helps you avoid the classic trap of jumping straight to solution mode. When you begin with purpose, you can evaluate ideas against something stable. That prevents the “whiplash of the week” as priorities tug you around. And it gives your team permission to say, “Helpful idea—how does it serve our purpose?”

One more tip: don’t treat purpose as a plaque on the wall. Treat it as a practice—a daily opportunity to align time, attention, and energy. Ask at the end of meetings, “What today actually moved our purpose forward?” Make the answer visible.

Activity Spotlight: Purpose‑to‑Practice (P2P)

What it is. P2P is a five‑part arc—Purpose → Principles → Participants → Structure → Practices—that helps groups move from why to what‑we’ll‑do‑next, together. It’s wonderfully flexible: run it as a named activity with timeboxes, or use it as a design “stencil” to quietly guide planning.

Why it works now. Transitions create both momentum and ambiguity. P2P harnesses the momentum while channeling it into choices your team can own. It slows the rush to “do all the things” and instead builds from a shared why, then chooses the few practices that matter most.

How to run it (60–75 minutes).

  • Purpose (8–10 min): Individuals write a one‑sentence why for this next cycle. Share and synthesize to one crisp statement.
  • Principles (10–12 min): In pairs, generate non‑negotiable guides for how we’ll pursue that purpose. Merge into 5–7 principles.
  • Participants (8–10 min): Map who must be involved (owners, contributors, advisors, decision‑makers) and who’s been missing. Invite inclusion.
  • Structure (12–15 min): Decide how we’ll distribute control: decisions, cadences, artifacts, channels, and constraints that help the work happen.
  • Practices (15–20 min): Commit to the three smallest, observable practices we’ll start now. Assign owners and first checkpoints.

Prompts you can copy/paste this month:

  • What did summer teach you that you want to apply this fall?
  • What’s one practice you’ll carry into this next cycle?
  • What will you stop doing as you transition into what’s next?
  • How will you practice your purpose this month—specifically and visibly?

Run P2P with your whole team to kick off the quarter—or adapt it for a solo reset. Either way, end with calendar blocks and check‑ins (more on that below) so practice becomes real, not aspirational.

Punctuating the Threshold

Rituals aren’t fluff; they’re cognitive handrails. They mark before/after and help people make meaning as they step across a threshold. When transitions stack up, ritual stabilizes the story: We paused. We honored. We chose what to carry forward.

Try a “close the season” moment before you sprint into the next one. Ask the team: “What do we want to remember from this last cycle?” “What do we leave behind?” Keep it light and human—photos, small wins, even a funny “never again” wall. The point is to end gracefully, not just stop.

Then, introduce one new team ritual to mark the start: a fresh notebook, a new channel naming convention, a 10‑minute weekly “principles in action” round. Small rituals create clean edges and shared language. Six months from now, you want the team to say, “Oh right, that’s when we started doing X”—because that story helps them see momentum.

Finally, make reflection part of the ritual, not an optional extra. Pair weekly reflection with your team’s stand‑up (“What did we move that served our purpose?”) or with your 1:1s (“Which principle felt most alive for you this week?”). Play with pace: sometimes slowing down is the fastest way to real progress.

Small Shifts That Compound

Coming out of a break, we often overestimate what can change by Monday and underestimate what can change by the end of the month. The trick is to choose atomic practices—tiny, repeatable moves that compound.

As a leader or facilitator, translate the big transition into micro‑behaviors your team can own. If your purpose emphasizes customer closeness, one micro‑practice might be “five customer notes reviewed before we prioritize.” If your purpose emphasizes inclusion, a practice might be “rotate meeting facilitation weekly and publish the queue.”

Celebrate progress on the small stuff. Momentum is emotional as much as operational. When the team sees itself keeping promises, confidence climbs and larger shifts become possible. Build in visible acknowledgement—end‑of‑week shout‑outs, a kanban lane called “kept commitments,” or a tiny trophy that passes to whoever best embodied a principle.

To help people pick the right small shifts, use these prompts:

  • Carry: What energized me in the last cycle that I want more of?
  • Drop: What returned from vacation with me that I don’t want to carry?
  • Nudge: What’s the smallest behavior that would make the biggest difference if we did it daily/weekly?
  • Name: What will we call this shift so we can talk about it?

Designing for Agency & Flow

Teams often stumble on the “Structure” step of P2P because it sounds abstract. Here’s the simple definition: Structure is how we deliberately distribute control so the right work happens with the right people at the right time.

Start by naming the decisions that must be made in this cycle and clarifying who has what kind of say (recommend, approve, veto, inform). Decide where those decisions live—async docs, weekly reviews, sprint reviews—and what artifacts make them visible (decision logs, working agreements, dashboards). This reduces the “invisible maze” that slows teams down.

Then, check your cadences. Are you meeting too often about the wrong things and too rarely about the right ones? Structure isn’t more meetings; it’s better rhythms. For instance, a monthly “principles check” can prevent three months of drift. A bi‑weekly “stakeholder circle” can surface concerns before they calcify into resistance.

Finally, consider access and inclusion as structural issues, not just cultural aspirations. Who is routinely left out of early conversations? Who sees outputs only at the end? Adjusting visibility and involvement is one of the most powerful levers you have. Structure can give people real agency, which, in turn, fuels ownership of the practices you’ve chosen.

Your Purpose Compass

Peter Drucker famously coached leaders by looking at where their time actually went. We love the spirit of that move because calendars don’t lie. They are your purpose, expressed in hours.

Try a quick Calendar Remix aligned to your P2P output:

  1. Aspirational view (10 min): If our purpose is the north star, what should the ideal week/month look like—time blocks, review cadences, deep‑work windows, stakeholder touchpoints? Sketch it.
  2. Current reality (10 min): Look back at the last 2–4 weeks. What % of time aligned to purpose? What’s the ratio of “purpose‑moving” to “noise”? Get to actual numbers.
  3. Bridging moves (10–15 min): Choose three calendar edits that get you closer to the aspirational week. Protect them like product features—name them, ship them, and don’t regress.

For teams, run this as a workshop. Share anonymized ratios, agree on a handful of “purpose blocks” everyone defends (e.g., weekly customer time, principle review, decision check), and schedule your first check‑in now. In 30 days, compare ratios again. Progress looks like the calendar converging on the purpose you declared.

Remember: this is about practice, not performance. You’re training a muscle. The goal is not a perfect calendar; it’s a purposeful one that steadily reflects what matters.

Turn Renewal Into Momentum

If summer was the pause button, this threshold is your play button. Don’t just return—re‑imagine. Use P2P to reconnect to purpose, translate it into a few small practices, and then shape the structures and calendars that help those practices endure. Expect to tinker. Expect to learn. Expect, most of all, to choose—again and again—what you’ll carry forward and what you’ll leave behind.

To make it easy, here’s our simple 5R Transition Check you can run with your team this week:

  • Return: Name the moment you’re in. What’s ending? What’s beginning?
  • Reflect: What did we learn? What do we want to remember?
  • Ritualize: How will we mark this threshold (close and open)?
  • Reorient: Reaffirm purpose and principles. Who needs to be involved? What structures support us?
    Recommit: Choose three micro‑practices. Put them on the calendar. Set the first check‑in.

Activity highlight: We’ll be running Purpose‑to‑Practice in this week’s Facilitation Lab. Come practice it with peers, gather feedback, and leave with your first three micro‑practices already on your calendar. If you prefer a quieter start, jump into the Community Hub to swap prompts, examples, and templates with alumni and current students.

Join the Hub to share your “carry/leave behind” lists and see how others are structuring the fall reset.

Here’s to entering this next era with intention. Let’s make the transition together—and make it stick.