TED Talks Daily - How to get past the "messy middle" of a big change | Mary Martin

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

Did progress on your next big project stall out? Transformation expert Mary Martin refers to this moment as the "messy middle" — the frustrating gap between starting and finishing a goal, when you might lose confidence or give up altogether. Offering three ways to find glimmers of progress when the going gets tough, she explores what to do when you feel stuck. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. You know that moment where you're trying to do something hard and it just starts to feel too hard? Maybe you've started a new job, changed careers, launched a project, or taken on some goal that seemed totally possible at the beginning, but then somewhere along the way, it gets messy. The finish line feels far away. The early optimism is gone, and you start to wonder, is this still worth it? Should I give up?

Transformation expert Mary Martin calls this moment the messy middle. It's that moment when the pinnacle seems completely out of reach, even though you've done everything right. Mary works with professionals and companies going through major transformations every day. In her talk, she explains why this messy middle isn't necessarily a sign that something has gone wrong, but rather a sign you're moving in the right direction. Messiness is a sign. of bold ambition.

Change absolutely is hard, simply because it's hard. Transformation without a messy middle means you probably won't get the big results you were hoping for. And so instead of being afraid of this moment, you should embrace it. She shares what she's learned about how leaders keep going when the outcome still isn't clear and offers actionable tips for all of us to hold on to

when we're in the hardest part of change. that's coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the day. I snapped this photo of my daughter this summer when we had the chance to hike together on our vacation in Colorado. I know you can't see her face, but I promise she's smiling. She is so glad she made it to the top of the mountain. But actually, the photo op almost didn't happen.

Because after starting out with incredible, incredible optimism and excitement in joining me on this hike, she quickly began to grow tired. Her seven-year-old legs, after an hour of steep terrain, had had all they could take, and she was getting frustrated and teary-eyed, and I realized I needed to shift from hiking companion to cheerleader. I know you can do it.

I've actually been to the top of this mountain, and we're almost there. Of course we can turn around if you need to, but I think you're going to be glad that you made it. She was really ready to give up, but then she scrambled up that last little ledge to the top, and all of that frustration faded as she saw the view and took in the sunshine.

She was so proud of herself. Now, even if you've never been hiking, which I do encourage, if you haven't, I imagine you can relate to this story, because no matter whether you've started a business, made a big career switch, or just tried to take up tennis at the age of 40, not that I know anything about that,

we all have experienced what I call the messy middle. It's that moment when the pinnacle seems completely out of reach, even though you've done everything right. As a senior leader in BCG's digital and AI practice, I've worked with dozens of business leaders as they've transformed their companies using new technologies. Almost every one of these transformation journeys starts out in the same way.

There's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of optimism, because everyone knows this is the opportunity to do something new. But inevitably, they hit the messy middle. Maybe results are slow to materialize. Maybe their teams start to lose confidence, or maybe the market changes. It's out of their control. And no matter what the context, just like my daughter, even very seasoned executives, grow frustrated in this moment, and many of them actually want to call off the transformation.

Well, as much as we want to avoid those messy middle moments, I would argue not only are they inevitable, they're a good thing. Why? Because messiness is a sign of bold ambition. Change absolutely is hard, simply because it's hard. Transformation without a messy middle means you probably won't get the big results you were hoping for.

And so instead of being afraid of this moment, you should embrace it. It means you're on the right track. Okay, obviously. Obviously, that doesn't make it easy. We need tools to weather the messy middle successfully. And my advice is to look for glimmers of progress, small indicators that you're on the right track,

even when the summit is completely out of sight. The first place I look for these glimmers of progress is in results for the business. So one of my clients is a fast food chicken brand. And when we started working together, their operations were fairly slow. It took about 18 minutes to cook an order of chicken wings. And that was because they were cooking fresh chicken

and not pre-cooked frozen chicken. So I don't know if you've ever had chicken wings, but when they're freshly cooked, they are delicious. But customers were pretty unhappy because time was long. They didn't want to wait that long. We needed a way to speed things up without sacrificing quality.

So we designed an AI-powered forecasting tool that would predict how many customer orders were going to be placed and then would guide the employees in the store on how much chicken to prepare so there was always fresh chicken when orders were placed. Great vision. The CEO knew this was the right approach.

But it was going to take some time. We needed to design, we needed to build, and then we needed to scale it out. And in the meantime, the CEO had to go to all those franchisees and convince them that they should make some meaningful investments in this new technology. We didn't have a year to wait and hope that the results turned out like we expected. So we focused on finding glimmers of progress. We built a very rudimentary version of the tool.

And then we took it on a clipboard, printed Excel sheet, and a pen. we went one night into a restaurant, and we stood with the employees, and we guided them on how to prepare the food. So, how about you drop 25 chicken wings into the friar now? 15 minutes later, now dropped 60 chicken wings into the friar. That first test showed great promise. We were seeing a couple minutes shaved off their speed of service.

Certainly wasn't perfect. No one wants to do this manually, but it showed the potential, and it was enough to give the entire leadership team conviction that we were on the right track. In the months that followed, we kept investing in the solution, improving it, so we were seeing a 50% improvement in speed of service. And as more restaurants were testing it,

seeing better and better results, franchisees grew excited, investors grew excited, and they were ready to scale to the entire system. Without that very first test and that glimmer of progress, it would have been really hard to have conviction for what became a multi-year journey. The second place you can look for glimmers of progress is in your team, how they're working together. Another one of my clients is a gas station and convenience store chain. We worked with them on a multi-year transformation to improve most of their core business functions with AI.

So things like how they priced the products in the store, how they staffed their labor, and how many people were staffed in this door, how they planned the inventory mix they were going to have. At the start of this journey together, we surveyed their team because we wanted to understand if they were going to have any points of friction. Could we get ahead of any challenges? And we found that most of their mid-level managers

didn't really feel like they had a voice in how company decisions were being made. And so the chief digital officer, who was leading this, implemented a simple, powerful concept. Everyone has a flag, and I need you to use it. What he meant was, no matter your role, no matter your title, if you raise a flag, senior leaders are going to listen, and they will act. Within just a couple months, members of the extended working team

had suggested some changes to our timeline, some different ways to think, about scoping the use cases, even different ways that we could test things to make sure we were getting the best results. And the Chief Digital Officer went a little farther. He actually had the team members, not the senior leaders, present results regularly to the CEO. This was such a significant cultural shift. And we went from people feeling like change was just being forced down into the organization to feeling like they really had a voice in how to how to how the objectives were being set. And it was that shift in the team

that gave us confidence that the results we delivered were going to stick. And that was long before we saw the double-digit returns that that transformation yielded. Finally, if you're in a messy middle, you can look for glimmers of progress in yourself.

One of my other clients was the chief strategy officer for a group of snack food brands. And we were working with them on a large effort to rethink some of their digital app experiences, to develop better email communications, and to redesign some of the loyalty programs, not just in one of the brands, but actually multiple brands across the group. When we started working together, the chief strategy officer had a lot of conviction, a very clear vision. He was really the one advocating for this

transformation. But he hadn't led anything this big, and he didn't really have any intuition on how this journey was going to feel as it unfolded. And I watched as he grew frustrated, even with his own team, because progress was happening more slowly than he wanted. When other senior members of the organization would question the approach or sometimes just express skepticism, he would grow defensive. And by the midway point of the 18-month journey, his relationships were strained with most of the other leaders. He came to the realization that he was going to have to change his approach

because he couldn't make this successful on his own. He had to have partnership. And I watched him begin to intentionally tune his leadership style. He started working, on building bridges, on bringing people along. He would show up to meetings ready to listen and not trying to push one agenda. He would work on controlling what he could control

and let the organization move at its pace around him. To be honest, it didn't make the journey easier. He was a hard transformation. But that sign of progress in him as a leader actually was one of the biggest indicators that this was going to succeed for the company. So maybe you're finding yourself in a messy middle right now, personally or professionally.

Try to remember, messiness is a sign that you're doing something big. You haven't reached the goal yet, but you will. Maybe you haven't won a tennis match, like me, but your backhand is improving. Maybe you haven't hit the big, big milestone that's next on your list, but you've delivered a small win. Celebrate it.

I like to buy cupcakes for my team or make a cake. Maybe you just take the time to call a mentor and share your success. Whatever you do, turn those glimmers into energy that will propel you up the mountain. Because I am very confident that when you climb over those last few rocks and you walk into the sunshine, you will be really glad

that you didn't turn around. Thank you. That was Mary Martin at TED at BCG, 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast

from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tonzica, Sungmar Narnivon. Additional support from Daniela Ballereseo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey-Lott. Learn more at podcasts.com.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.