The bigger the company, the more the signal turns to static.
I’ve had countless examples when I’ve had leadership sync ups with the Head of Analytics. We walk through the priorities for the next quarter. All clear, makes sense, and we feel like we finally have our marching orders. We even agree to have a quick brainstorm on how our teams will collaborate based on new priorities. And we might even set up all mighty recurring strategic followup meetings to check in how things are going.
Shortly after you do the same with your team. Plan out next steps and a new quarter gets underway.
But a few weeks, or sometimes even a few days later, you are in another strategy meeting. This time led by your boss’s boss, our VP. She is talking about the objectives for the next quarter, and they sound… different. Not just a nuance. A complete change in direction. The kind of shift that makes everything you just agreed to feel like quicksand.
I can understand why. The VP had probably just finished some offsite where the “real” priorities were hammered out, and my direct boss hadn’t gotten the memo yet, or hadn’t had time to spin it.
It’s a common corporate problem: the message from the top gets distorted on its way down. It's still frustrating, though, when your team is waiting for you to make sense of the noise.
You're stuck in limbo. You don’t want to look incompetent by saying, "Hold on, everything I just told you might be wrong." But you also don't want to commit your team to weeks of work on the wrong thing. Meanwhile, your team is excited and wants to kick off: "When can we kick off this?", "Do you want us to prioritize this or that?". But all you have is conflicting directives.
I remember this time, years back, when I felt paralyzed waiting for alignment. I was thinking, "Better to wait for perfect clarity than move in the wrong direction.", right?
I told my team we were "gathering more information." We spent a couple of weeks in a limbo, doing other work, waiting for the smoke to clear from the executive suite. But when the actual direction finally came down, we were already behind. The team was demoralized, and we missed an important internal deadline.
The cost of waiting for perfect clarity was far higher than the risk of making an imperfect, provisional decision. That’s when I came to realize.
I won’t be able to always (more like ever) pass down executive strategy. But what I can do is absorb the changes and filter the noise from above so my team can focus on their work. They need to be able to act, not just wait for a perfect plan to be revealed.
The alternative to waiting for perfect clarity is to become comfortable with making provisional decisions. Here’s how I would approach situation like this:
The Good Enough Decision.
1. Acknowledge the ambiguity (internally, to yourself). Don't pretend you have all the answers if you don't.
2. Make your best assumption. Based on what you do know, what's the most likely or safest path forward for the next few days or week? What's the "good enough" safest bet for now.
3. Communicate with context. Tell your team: "Here's what we know right now. There's some evolving context at the leadership level, but based on our understanding, this is the most productive path for us to take for now. We’re making X our provisional priority because Y." Frame it as an informed hypothesis, not as something carved in stone.
4. Set a specific check-in. Tell them you'll schedule a 10-minute update call or send an email by specific time/day with any new information or adjustments. This shows you’re actively managing the uncertainty, not ignoring it.
5. Reassure them. Your team's effort isn't wasted. Even a provisional direction builds skills, uncovers problems, or generates insights that will be useful no matter where the final alignment lands.
The Takeaway
This isn't about making decisions you know are wrong. It's about recognizing that the path is often unclear, but your team needs a direction. Your role is to give them the best plan you can right now, even if you know it might shift.
The alternative is leaving them adrift. I’d say that's far worse.
See you next week.