You're Not Lost. You're Spiralling Up.

The Spiral of Life™: A Navigation Tool for Leaders in Transition

You did everything right. Built the company. Climbed the ranks. Hit your numbers.

But now, success feels... directionless. The map you used to follow is gone.

You're what I call a post-career wanderer—accomplished, but no longer aligned with the goals that once drove you. You've grown beyond a job-based career, earned your freedom, but lost your map. Maybe it's the executive who sold his company and now feels empty. The senior partner who's mastered her field but craves meaning. The successful founder facing burnout and questioning everything.

This isn't failure. It's positioning. And there's a pattern to it that, once understood, transforms crisis into opportunity.

The Pattern: Why Linear Success Models Break Down

What if the very model of success you've lived by—linear, goal-driven, upward-only—is the reason your success now feels empty?

Most people think of progress as a ladder to climb, a mountain to summit. But that metaphor breaks down when you've already reached the peak and realise it's not where you want to be.

The linear model is everywhere: go to university, land the university graduate role, work hard for five years, get promoted to the next rung. Rinse and repeat. Climb from analyst to manager to director to VP. Build equity. Buy the house. Retire at 65 with the gold watch.

I don’t believe traditional modern retirement as we know it today is set in stone. It is a modern economic invention designed by governments. It began in 1889 in Germany to keep social unrest over lack of jobs from occurring. Then in 1933 with FDR’s “New Deal” in the USA selling the dream of a life of ease when most people died before their Social Security paid back what was paid in.

Spiral View of Time Instead of Linear

James B. Jordan described time as spiral rather than cyclical. Over many years of thinking about how to apply this view of time, I've developed a practical model for leaders in transition: The Spiral of Life™.

This framework reveals why your apparent "setbacks" are actually setups for your next level of impact. You don't move in cycles that repeat. You move in spirals that ascend—revisiting familiar territory with accumulated wisdom, deeper perspective, and greater capacity.

The Spiral Arc: Build-Test- Become

The Spiral Arc isn't a straight line. Imagine it like a helix: three turns, each higher than the last—Build, Test, Become. Every spiral contains these distinct phases that appear in executive careers, business development, and personal evolution:

Build Phase – Foundations and New Territory

You're starting something significant: a new role, company, market expansion, or major life change. High energy, clear vision, rapid capability development. You're establishing territory, creating systems, proving competence. Whether it's a promotion, pivot, startup, or personal reinvention, you're in construction mode.

Focus: "Who am I becoming in this context?"

Test Phase – Market Reality Meets Your Model

What worked in theory hits real-world complexity. Your Build-phase structures get stress-tested by market forces, competitive pressures, or organisational dynamics. Key assumptions prove incomplete. The systems that once felt solid now feel brittle under new demands.

Many executives get stuck here, cycling between defensive responses and reactive pivots. But this phase has a purpose: to strip away everything that doesn't work so something more robust can emerge.

Focus: "What survives contact with reality?"

Become Phase – From Proving to Contributing

Your motivations shift from external validation to internal purpose. You build because it matters, not just because it works. Your failures become intellectual property. Your experience becomes your unique value proposition. This isn't an ending—it's an evolution to your most meaningful work.

Focus: "What must I contribute that only I can?"

Midlife Disorientation: The Hidden Signpost

The transitions between phases are where real transformation happens.

Build to Test Crisis: Your elegant structure isn't scaling. External forces demand adaptation. You need to test your model against bigger, more complex challenges.

Test to Become Crisis: You've proven your capability, but capability isn't enough anymore. You want to build something that creates lasting value beyond your personal involvement.

Spiral Renewal: You've mastered one level and feel called to start again—but higher. New Build phase, but with Become-level wisdom. This might manifest as taking on a bigger role, entering a new industry, launching something entirely different, or applying your expertise in an unexpected context.

Signs you're between phases:

• You've outgrown your current role but aren't sure what's next

• Success feels hollow or incomplete

• Past achievements don't motivate you anymore

• You feel a pull to do something meaningful—but can't yet name what

• Everything feels uncertain—but charged with meaning

Case Study: The Founder's Identity Shift

I worked with a technology founder who sold his company at 48. By all measures, he'd won. But six months post-exit, he was miserable.

"I wake up and wonder what the hell I'm doing," he said. "I thought selling would be the finish line. It feels like I've just started a race I didn't sign up for."

Using The Spiral of Life™ framework, we identified his position: transitioning from his second Test phase into his first mature Become phase. The critical shift wasn't tactical—it was identity. He had to stop seeing himself as "the guy who builds companies" and start seeing himself as "the guy who builds leaders."

That internal reframe took eight months. He fought it, tried to jump back into another startup, even considered buying back his old company. But eventually, he accepted the transition.

Today, he mentors early-stage founders and sits on three nonprofit boards. Same skillset, different identity. He's building again, but at a higher level of the spiral.

The pattern: Crisis often signals an identity upgrade, not a career change.

The Turning Point

If this sounds like you—restless, disoriented, driven but aimless you're not off-track. You're on a different track. A spiral, not a line.

Here's how to navigate it.

Practical Navigation: Your Crisis as Strategic Intelligence

Name Your Current Phase

You can't navigate what you can't name. Identify where you are on the spiral. This alone reduces anxiety and provides direction.

Honour the Pattern, Not the Timeline

Returning to familiar challenges doesn't mean failure. You're approaching old territory with new capacity. Trust the spiral's rhythm, not society's timeline.

Release What No Longer Serves

Each phase requires letting go of what worked in the previous one. The successful executive must release the need to prove competence. The proven leader must release the addiction to being the smartest person in the room.

Extract the Strategic Intelligence from Your Crisis

Every crisis contains something essential for your next phase. The breakdown of Build-phase structures creates space for Test-phase learning. Test-phase disillusionment births Become-phase wisdom. Ask: "What is this crisis teaching me that I need for what's next?"

Why This Matters Now: The Age of Spiral Leadership

We're witnessing the breakdown of traditional career structures and the emergence of what I call "spiral leadership"—where your ability to navigate multiple phases simultaneously becomes your greatest competitive advantage.

The leaders who will thrive integrate technical capability with strategic wisdom, rapid adaptation with deep principles, innovation with meaning and purpose.

You're not obsolete. You're the interpreter of meaning in an age of infinite information.

When Strategy Meets Emotion

Let's pause here. This process isn't just strategic—it's deeply emotional. Transition disrupts more than routines. It unsettles identity. It surfaces anxiety, grief, even anger. You're not just navigating external change—you're grieving the loss of a former self.

That internal disorientation is not weakness. It's the signal that something true is shifting inside. The spiral doesn't just elevate your thinking. It forces you to feel what you've avoided, question what you've anchored to, and shed what no longer fits. And as hard as that is, it's part of the ascent.

Your Crisis Is Your Compass

Your crisis isn't a dead end. It's a directional shift.

I know this because I've walked it. When I moved from the USA to Australia at 52, I thought I was just changing geography. I was actually entering a spiral that would test everything I thought I knew about business, relationships, and identity. The disorientation was profound. The breakthrough was worth it.

The spiral you're walking is ancient, but your particular path up it is uniquely yours. Your wounds, wisdom, and way of seeing are not accidents—they're your qualifications for the work that's waiting.

Choose to see your crisis as the strategic intelligence it actually is.

Need a guide for the journey? I work with accomplished leaders navigating exactly these transitions. If you're ready to turn your crisis into your next chapter, let's talk.

Kevin

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Kevin L. Baker is a former President, CFO, and COO, and current adjunct lecturer at The University of New South Wales School of Business. Kevin is an expert in family business sustainability and strategic futures. He combines board-room realism with virtue-ethics rigor and a human-centred view of work. His advisory practice, writing, and educational masterclass offerings equip executives and managers to solve thorny problems, build high-trust cultures, and turn their next chapter into meaningful impact.

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Exciting Announcement! I have recently completed my first family business short story. I will be publishing it paid subscriber only on a new Substack, Amazon, and my new Baker Hub platform. Details soon!

I’ve spent my life working in and around family businesses—leading them, advising them, surviving them. If you’ve ever worked in a family business, advised one, or loved someone trapped in one… you’ll recognise the terrain.

This is fiction for those who know:

• The meeting after the meeting is where the real decisions happen.

• The family name is a brand—and sometimes, a weapon.

• Stories that are case studies in business leadership and management without the boredom of the business school approach.

Welcome to the stories that could never be told out loud. Until now.

Family business isn’t just a company structure. It’s a world of silent expectations, unspoken rules, family clan warfare, 1G-2G-3G drama, and loyalty tested in boardrooms and dining rooms alike.

I write family business fiction because some truths are too raw—or too dangerous—to say directly (boy do I know this). But in story, they can breathe.

The genre I’m shaping is Southern Gothic realism. It’s about power, sycophants, sins, jealousy, gossip, money with memory and plenty of legacy with strings attached. The tone is moody, layered, and sometimes dark—but always human.

My series, The Sons-in-Law Chronicles, explores what happens when you’re close to power but outside the bloodline. When you’re expected to fix the business, have responsibility without authority, but not touch the inheritance, the credit, or the glory.

These aren’t just dramas. They’re parables of control, silence, betrayal, and belonging.

If you’ve ever tried to navigate a family business without a map—this is the fiction that is your map of where the landmines and gold mines are.

— Kevin L. Baker
Writer. Advisor. Insider.

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Kevin writes about leadership, technology, and the human experience at the intersection of both. When he’s not writing articles helping others spiral up to success, he’s advising leaders to remember what actually matters. He runs Executive Forum peer mentoring groups, is a consultant, founder advisor, and educator.

You can find me here:

📍 X (Twitter) – https://x.com/KevinBakerBiz

📍 Threads –https://www.threads.com/@kevinbakerau

📍 Website: www.kevinbakerinc.com

📍 All my links https://linktr.ee/Kevinbaker

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