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  • You tell Gina what you are building and what is getting in the way. Three short questions when you book help the call start where you are.
  • Together you name the real problem and one next move, whether or not we work together.
  • If it is a fit, a one-page scope note with the fee arrives within two business days.

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Most owners and nonprofit leaders I talk with are not short on effort. When something keeps slipping (follow-up, planning, the hard project that needs a quiet morning), the usual fix is a promise to try harder next week. Angela Duckworth’s new book suggests a better place to start: the situation around the work.

What Situated says

Duckworth is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Grit, which focused on passion and perseverance. Her new book, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best, looks outward. Her argument is that our surroundings shape our thoughts and actions more than we realize, and that seeing this clearly gives us more choices. In her preface she writes that “recognizing the power of the situation doesn’t undermine your own agency.”

She calls that choice situational agency, and in an excerpt published by Knowledge at Wharton she puts it in one line:

“Situational agency means taking charge of your circumstances.”
Angela Duckworth, Situated

She is also candid about the limits: some people have far more freedom to change their circumstances than others, but most of us can change something.

The idea has a long research trail. In a 2016 paper with Tamar Szabó Gendler and James Gross, “Situational Strategies for Self-Control,” Duckworth and her coauthors argued that self-control is often easier when people choose and shape their situations ahead of time, before the hard moment arrives, instead of relying on willpower in the moment.

The four rings, translated for a small team

Duckworth names four elements of situations that bring out our best. It helps to picture them as rings around you. The closest one, your space, is the part you control most, which makes it a good place to start.

Your situation map

Four rings, from the one you control most to the one that surrounds you.

YouSpacePeersMentorsCulture
  • Set up your spaceA blocked hour for follow-up, the phone in another room during deep work, a template that makes the next step obvious.
  • Pick your peersA peer group of owners or directors who raise your standards, or a new hire paired with a steady colleague.
  • Attract mentorsAn advisor, board member, or partner a few steps ahead, asked specific questions on a regular schedule.
  • Choose your cultureWritten norms for how the team decides, follows up, and celebrates, kept where everyone can see them.

To remember it: space, peers, mentors, culture, from the inside out.

Get the Situation Map (PDF): one page to fill in, plus a pocket card to cut out and keep.

Leaders shape other people’s situations

Duckworth also writes about helping other people succeed by shaping their situations. For anyone who leads a team, a program, or a classroom, this is most of the job. New staff learn faster when the first week is planned and someone is assigned to them. Volunteers come back when their first shift has a clear role and a familiar face. Customers and families take the next step when the next step is easy to find. A service blueprint is one way to see the situation your customers are in, step by step.

An example from my own work

I run my own businesses on a few situational supports. A planning brief arrives twice a week, built from my email, calendar, and task boards, so the week’s decisions are in front of me before the week starts. A voice guide sits behind every draft, so I am editing instead of starting from a blank page. Both work by changing what is in front of me and when, which takes less discipline than remembering everything on my own. These are my own tools, so I treat them as working examples rather than proof of what every team will see.

What a situational design engagement looks like

When StrideForward helps a small team with work that keeps slipping, the work usually includes:

  • A look at the situation: short conversations with the people doing the work, and a map of where the task lives in their week.
  • A redesign of one or two situations: the schedule, the handoff, the template, or the default that makes the right step easier.
  • Supports that keep it going: peer or mentor structures, and AI workflows that bring the next step forward with a person approving what goes out.
  • A short test, then a handover, with the new setup documented so your team can keep it running.

Signs the situation is working against you

  • The same task slips every week, no matter how committed people are.
  • Deep work only happens after hours.
  • New staff or volunteers learn the job by asking around.
  • Good intentions live in meeting notes and never reach the calendar.
  • You are the only person who knows what happens next.

If two or more of those sound familiar, start with one task and change one thing about the situation around it.

Apply it

Try this before you plan next week

  • Pick one task that keeps slipping.
  • Write down where and when it should happen, and what gets in the way.
  • Change one thing about the space: block the time, move the phone, put the template where the work starts.
  • Name one peer or mentor who would raise your standard on it, and ask for twenty minutes.
  • Make the next step easier to take than to skip for one person on your team.
  • Check in after two weeks and keep what worked.

Tip: your checks save on this device and land in your notes below. Prefer paper? Print the page. (We will not tell anyone you still print things.)

Your notes

Everything you write in the Your turn boxes, and every step you check off, collects here so you can take it with you.

Nothing here yet. Answer a Your turn prompt or check off a step above, and it will show up here.

Your notes stay in this browser until you send them. Texting and your email app use your own apps, so you choose where the notes go.

Know someone who needs this? Send this field note to a teammate.

Name the real problem first.

The free Problem Clarity Worksheet helps you separate what keeps happening from why it happens, then rewrite the problem in one sentence and choose a two-week test.

Get the free worksheet

Common questions

What is situational agency?

It is Angela Duckworth’s term for the control you have over your situation. In an excerpt from Situated published by Knowledge at Wharton, she describes it as taking charge of your circumstances: your space, your peers, your mentors, and your culture.

Is Situated a follow-up to Grit?

Yes. Grit looked at passion and perseverance, the qualities inside people who reach hard goals. Situated looks at the people, places, and objects around them, and how to choose and shape those on purpose.

Does this mean willpower does not matter?

Effort still matters. Duckworth’s 2016 research with Tamar Szabó Gendler and James Gross suggests self-control is often easier when you shape your situation ahead of time, so the hard moment asks less of your willpower.

How does this apply to a small business or nonprofit?

Start with one task that keeps slipping and change one thing about the situation around it: when it happens, where the tools are, who checks in, or what the default is. Then test the change for two weeks.

Sources and further reading

Keep going with StrideForward

Is one task always slipping?

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