Caught in The Undertow
Have you ever been caught in an undertow?
I have.
When I was a kid, my family would pile into our red Toyota Corolla station wagon and head to the Washington Coast to play in the Pacific. One summer, I was out in the surf with my brothers when I unknowingly stepped into an undertow—a powerful current that pulls water (and people) back out to sea.
It ripped me off my feet. In a flash, I was underwater and being sucked out by the current.
Then—boom! My mom’s strong hands cut through the water and yanked me to safety.
I was disoriented, panicked, and terrified. I could have died.
Undertows are sneaky like that. You don’t always know you’re in one—until you’re already being pulled under.
That moment stuck with me.
Recently, I was observing a team as they ran a retrospective. They were trying to align on what was and wasn’t working—but partway through, they paused and asked if they could just start solving the problems and assigning action items. I pushed back and invited them to continue the exercise. The goal was to gain shared understanding and alignment before solving.
They continued and I stepped in a few more times to remind them not to solve. The pull to fix things immediately was too strong. Business-as-usual was running the show.
That pull they were feeling? That’s the undertow.
So what exactly is the undertow?
The undertow is the invisible pull of old habits, mindsets, and systems that drag teams back into familiar but ineffective ways of working—especially when they’re trying to change.
You don’t always see it.
You don’t always name it.
But you feel it the moment you try to do something differently—and suddenly, everything starts pulling you back.
It can show up as:
The urge to “rush and solve” before fully understanding a problem
Silence in meetings where honesty is “encouraged”
Fresh ideas met with “We’ve always done it this way,” “That won’t work,” or “We’ve already tried that”
Building a new process—then layering the old one right on top
Setting new team norms and abandoning them two weeks later
Old habits. Unseen patterns. Comfort with what's familiar, even when it no longer serves. It drags teams back into outdated and unhelpful ways of working without even realizing it’s happening.
Once you understand the undertow, you realize it’s active in any part of your life where you’re pursuing change and feeling resistance.
Conquering the undertow requires three things:
Awareness — to notice when you're being pulled out to sea
Skill — to swim sideways instead of struggling against the current
Discipline — to keep from getting pulled back again and again
Until those are second nature, having a guide matters.
Someone who’s been there.
Someone who can see the signs and knows how to respond.
That’s the work I do.
Helping teams stop fighting the current—and start moving forward together.
