Groundhog Day Leadership

When Repeating Yourself Is a Systems Problem

Happy Groundhog Day.

I didn’t check on Punxsutawney Phil today. He’s fine. He always is.
He’s also not the main character in my February 2, anyway.

The 1993 movie Groundhog Day is.

I love this story. I love Bill Murray. I love the premise: the same day on repeat until something finally shifts—not outside, but inside. The setting stays the same. The people stay the same. The only way forward is changing how you show up within it.

The moment that premise stops being charming is when I hear myself saying the same thing for the sixth day in a row and realize nothing has changed.

That’s when I pause and think: oh. This again.

For me, that’s always a leadership signal.

When leaders find themselves repeating the same reminders, requests, or corrections, it’s rarely about effort or intelligence. It usually means something important is floating around instead of being anchored. The expectation exists—but only verbally. It lives in memory instead of in some kind of structure.

And memory is a terrible system.

Sometimes the fix is almost embarrassingly simple. A single sentence on the whiteboard in my classroom can do more than ten verbal reminders ever could:

Reminder: AP Style = No Oxford comma!

Once it’s visible, it sticks. People can reference it without asking. I stop repeating myself. The work gets cleaner. My energy goes toward teaching instead of correcting.

That’s what good systems do. They make the right thing easier to do.

Other times, the loop is bigger. The repetition isn’t about one habit—it’s about how the team is working together. That’s when the answer isn’t another reminder. It’s a pause.

We stop long enough to reset together. We name what matters now. We clarify expectations that may have drifted. We reestablish norms that everyone assumed—but no one had revisited.

This kind of pause can feel inefficient in the moment. It isn’t. It’s preventive care for teams.

Stephen R. Covey called this sharpening the saw. You stop what you’re doing long enough to tend the tool. You fix how the work is happening so the work itself doesn’t keep costing more than it should.

Leadership isn’t about powering through repetition. It’s about noticing patterns and responding with intention.

If your days feel stuck on repeat right now—if you’re saying the same thing over and over—pay attention to that frustration. It’s information. Something wants to be written down, clarified, redesigned.

Change the system, and the calendar finally moves forward.

I share reflections like this every Monday and gather them into one monthly email—subscribe if you’d rather read them over coffee than chase them online. Thanks for reading—I’m really glad you’re here.