Ritz Steytler

Executive Coach - London

33 years building tech businesses as CEO/COO, founder, director and investor. Now I work with CEOs and leaders navigating the hard stuff - strategy, change, and the deeply human side of leadership in the age of AI.

Every leader, every organisation, every career, every life moves in S-curves - and at some point, the curve you're on stops working. What got you here won't get you any further and you have to take the leap onto the next curve.

Between letting go of what worked and finding your footing on what comes next, there is a gap. Anthropologists call it liminal space. You’re neither here nor there. What worked before has stopped working. What comes next hasn’t taken shape yet. The old identity, the old playbook, the old way of operating – none of it applies, and you know it. But the new one isn’t available yet either.

This is the messy middle. It is deeply uncomfortable - not because something has gone wrong, but because this is what real transition feels like from the inside. The question isn't whether you'll face a messy middle. You're almost certainly already in one. The question is what you do inside it.

Most people mistake it for being stuck. They're not stuck. They're lost. Stuck people need to break inertia. Lost people need to find their bearings while they keep moving. The distinction matters enormously - and most leaders are trying to solve the wrong problem.

AI can now tell you everything you ever wanted to know about what to do. Knowledge is effectively free. What remains scarce - and what is becoming more valuable by the day - is the capacity to execute in conditions of uncertainty. To keep moving when you can't see the next landmark. To stay present and functional when every instinct is screaming for the safety of the familiar. That is wisdom. And it lives in the body as much as in the head.

This is yours to do. No one can complete it for you. But trying to do it alone is not a sign of strength - it's a miscalculation. The right support doesn't rescue you from the messy middle. It keeps you honest inside it, holds the complexity without collapsing it, and stays until the work is genuinely done.

Send me a message or visit https://ritzsteytler.com to learn more about how I can help.