How to Make Your Next Big Move Stick

Big ideas don’t fail because they’re weak. They fade when leaders don’t create the structure and space for them to hold.

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Picture this: you’ve just finished a big strategy session. The team is nodding, the slides looked good, and the idea feels right. Yet… there’s a part of you wondering: will this actually last past the first sprint, the first crisis, or the first no?

That pause is familiar to most leaders. It isn’t insecurity; it’s instinct. We know how often ambitious initiatives fade once the slides are tucked away and daily pressures return. Bold moves don’t usually fail because the idea is weak. They fail because the conditions for lasting success were never created.

In my work with founders, executives, and team leads, I’ve learned that making an idea stick requires three things: a disciplined way to frame it, a habit of testing assumptions early, and a deliberate container where the work can breathe. It’s not magic. It’s method.

Step One: How to Use the Business Model Canvas to See the Whole Field

When I take a team through the Business Model Canvas, it’s not because I believe one tool will guarantee success. I use it because it forces vision into its working parts.

We map customers, value propositions, channels, partners, costs, and revenue. Then I push the group to fill every block with possibilities. No editing. No premature pruning. The early stage is about range, about seeing the full landscape of what could be.

When I ask a team to fill every block of the canvas, the board fills in minutes. The moment the room sees just how many paths are on the table, the energy shifts from defending one pet idea to exploring the field. Framing the field is only the start. Once the possibilities are visible, the harder work begins: testing which ones hold up when pressure is applied.

Step Two: Turning Imagination into Evidence with the Lean Innovation Cycle

A wide canvas is a starting line, not a finish. To cross into execution, leaders have to test—not tell.

That’s where the lean cycle comes in: form a hypothesis, design a small test, observe the outcome, and adapt. The loop is simple but rarely followed with discipline. Too often, leaders leap from “good meeting” to “full rollout,” skipping the messy middle where learning actually happens. Wiley’s Testing Business Ideas catalogs more than 40 ways to stress-test new concepts without over-investing. From smoke-tests and landing pages to pilot cohorts and prototype demos, the point is always the same: expose assumptions early, when they’re cheap to fix.

Research at Northwestern backs this up: leaders who normalize experimentation create organizations that develop adaptive muscle. Teams trained to test quickly sharpen their instincts about what works, what doesn’t, and when to pivot.

I’ll often ask in a session: What belief has to be true for this to work? The silence that follows is usually where the real conversation begins. Testing surfaces patterns, but it also raises the question: how do you generate sharper options in the first place? That’s where the way you brainstorm matters.

Step Three: Better Than Brainstorming

Brainwriting and Critical Questions

Brainstorming has become ritualized in many organizations. Post-it notes, whiteboards, rapid-fire sharing. But research and experience suggest it often generates more confusion than clarity.

I rely on different methods:

• Brainwriting: Each person drafts ideas privately before sharing. This surfaces a wider range of thinking and reduces dominance by louder voices. Adam Grant and others have noted how much more effective this is in both in-person and remote settings.

• Critical questions: Instead of asking, “What’s our idea?” I push teams to ask, “What problem are we actually solving? Who feels the change first? What does success look like in 30, 90, 180 days?”

• Value mapping: Weighing brainstormed options against what customers, communities, or internal teams truly prize. It turns ideation into prioritization.

These practices don’t kill creativity; they focus it. They give leaders something more valuable than volume—they create traction. Testing and sharper ideation both matter, but neither can thrive without space to think, refine, and adapt.

Step Four: Why Space Is Strategy for Women Leaders

In high-pressure organizations, we often neglect to give ourselves space. Yet I have found that having that space is crucial. It can mean the difference between fleeting ideas and those that endure.

High-performing women in particular—many of whom balance leadership with caregiving and community roles—know the cost of crowded calendars. Without intentional containers, even brilliant strategies wilt under the press of daily obligations.

That’s why in my labs, I build in structured space:

• Protected blocks dedicated solely to testing and refinement.

• Red-team reviews and pre-mortems so flaws surface while there’s still time to fix them.

• Visible modeling of adaptation—leaders making pivots openly so teams see course correction as discipline, not defeat.

Space isn’t extra. It is part of the work. And even with space, ideas need structured rehearsal before they meet the full weight of an organization.

Step Five: Create Proving Grounds with Pilots and Shared Learning

Every significant shift needs more than a rollout plan. It needs a proving ground—structured spaces where ideas can be tested, adapted, and strengthened before they scale.

One way I guide teams through this is with iterative pilots. Instead of moving straight from planning to launch, we run progressive trials: a small cohort, a single department, a limited geography. Each pilot has a stage gate—a checkpoint where the data is reviewed before we expand. These gates keep us honest and stop momentum from outpacing evidence.

Just as important is externalizing the evidence. When learning stays siloed, organizations miss the chance to adapt together. I encourage leaders to share pilot results in plain view: through dashboards, short learning briefs, or open review sessions. Bring in frontline staff, partners, and even the communities served. When more people see the evidence and the pivots, experimentation becomes part of the culture, not just an executive exercise.

Proving grounds, done this way, don’t just validate ideas—they strengthen the organization’s capacity to learn in public. And that makes the next big move easier to carry forward.

The Takeaway

Big moves don’t last because leaders hope hard enough. They last because leaders give them the structure, the testing, and the space to mature.

The bold idea isn’t the hard part. The real work of leadership is making it stick.

Author Bio

Ricka’ Berry, MBA, is a strategist and founder of genius grace, a firm helping leaders align strategy with whole-person leadership. She blends research and lived practice to guide executives, boards, and teams through bold moves that last.