a burnt meal, band aid, crumpled paper, and a broken tool

Losing well: How honest reflection turns defeat into a growth

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – attributed to Thomas Edison

Let’s be honest: Failure stings and stinks. No matter your role, you’ve probably felt the gut punch of watching a project misfire, losing out on a key client, or realizing efforts missed the mark. When things go sideways, it’s human to want to move on quickly. Many teams bury frustrations and quickly shift their focus, hoping that momentum will heal their wounds. However, pushing past failure without proper reflection seems like a missed opportunity, doesn’t it? When you study teams that adapt and outpace competitors, there’s a noticeable pattern: not fewer failures, but better learning. The best teams aren’t perfect, but they lose exceptionally well.

Let’s take a look at how losing well can fuel lasting progress and smarter innovation and how to transform setbacks into real momentum.

Why we avoid failure and miss the gold

There’s an unspoken pressure to perform flawlessly. Perfection is rewarded and mistakes are typically not celebrated. While striving for excellence isn’t a bad thing, it’s easy for teams to equate imperfection with weakness and to see loss as a threat rather than an asset. But think about this:

Innovation thrives on experimentation
Experimentation guarantees failure along the way
Growth is the result of honest reflection

Avoiding mistakes doesn’t make a team stronger; it quietly erodes resilience. When failures are hidden, teams repeat blind spots and compound small errors into bigger ones. On the flip side, teams that openly reflect on defeats learn faster and recover stronger. Research on psychological safety (Google’s Project Aristotle, 2012–2015) shows that when people feel safe to admit missteps without fear, teams collaborate and outperform peers.

The defeats that teach the most

Not all failures are created equal. Some are careless, driven by lack of process or attention. Others are courageous, rooted in calculated risks or bold experiments. Only the latter have the potential to boost team learning. Celebrate those, and see careless ones as signals for better process.

Lost opportunities

Maybe you spent weeks tailoring a proposal, only to watch the prospect choose a competitor. Rather than shifting blame, dig into the detail:

What signs or signals did you miss?
What did the winning team do better?
What assumptions guided your strategy?

Feature flops

Perhaps you launched a product update with fanfare and high expectation but saw usage plateau or feedback turn sour. Resist the urge to blame the market or end users.

Were you actually solving the right problem?
Did you test enough, and with the right audience?
Were you listening for real user friction, or just echoing internal assumptions?

Team misfires

Maybe communication broke down on a deadline, you missed a key deliverable, or morale slumped. These misfires are often swept aside with generic retrospectives, but there’s so much value in the specific questions:

Where were expectations or roles unclear?
Did feedback dry up at a key moment?
Did anyone flag the issue early, and how did the team react?

Reframing mistakes from shame to strategy

A healthy learning culture meets mistakes with honest inquiry, not finger-pointing. Instead of “Who messed up?”, start with “What do we know now?”. Here’s how resilient teams process loss:

Lead with genuine interest and curiosity

Brené Brown, in Dare to Lead, argues, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” Openly naming failure removes the shame and creates pathways for learning. Try questions like:

“What do we know now that we didn’t before?”
“What surprised us?”
“Where did we make assumptions?”

This frames loss as valuable and insightful data, not defeat.

Distinguish two types of failure

Avoidable: Slips due to lack of clarity, miscommunication, or skipping process.
Exploratory: Outcomes of smart experiments where risk was expected.

Reward honest reporting of both, but celebrate exploratory failure. True innovation requires teams to risk getting it wrong and report back.

Capture what you learn

Verbal debriefs fade fast. Build a habit of short write ups after every meaningful loss:

What did we try?
What didn’t work?
What signals pointed to the issue?
What will we do differently next time?

This simple practice builds a searchable database of “lessons learned”, turning memory into an asset.

Make space for losing well

Learning from defeat requires deliberate cultural cues. Here’s how to create psychological safety and normalize loss as fuel for growth:

Model learning from the top

When you admit your own misjudgments or openly review a failed project, you give your team permission to do the same.

Try language like:

“This didn’t go as planned. What can we learn from it?”
“The effort matters. The result surprised us, but I’m proud we went for it.”
“This is a data point, not a disaster.”

Make reflection public

Some team insights will be sensitive, but when possible, share mini case studies internally.

What we tried
What didn’t go as planned
What we learned
What we’ll try next time

Public reflection removes stigma and amplifies key lessons.

Recognize learning behaviors

Most organizations reward achievement. Start also rewarding the mindset and actions that drive better outcomes over time:

Spot and recognize when someone calls out risk.
Celebrate quick course corrections after a red flag.
Share wins from teams that pivoted due to lessons learned from prior refusal.

Recognition shifts focus from outcomes alone to continuous improvement.

Turning mistakes into momentum

Turning reflection into forward progress requires more than just good intentions. Here are some quick tips to get started

The 5 Whys

Start with the surface explanation and ask, “Why?” five times.

Example:

Why did we lose the RFP? Because our proposal didn’t clearly address the client’s top priorities.
Why didn’t it address their priorities? Because we misunderstood what mattered most to the selection committee.
Why did we misunderstand? Because we didn’t speak directly with a stakeholder before submitting.
Why didn’t we speak with one? Because we assumed the RFP document provided enough context.
Why did we make that assumption? Because we were focused on meeting the deadline and didn’t want to slow the process with outreach.

You’ll often find the true root is three or four whys deeper.

Hold a (blameless) postmortem

Frame postmortems as system and sequence reviews, not blame sessions.

What happened and in what order?
What were the contributing factors?
Where could the process have caught the problem/error?

Avoid naming and shaming. Focus on gaps in process, communication, or understanding.

Share learning case studies

At the end of a project, write a brief snapshot detailing:

What worked
What didn’t
What you’ll change in future attempts

Give a platform for team members who raised a red flag or pivoted quickly.

Make learning a routine

Consider a Slack channel, Notion board, or short section in team meetings to regularly share “lessons from last week.” Small, honest updates build team memory.

Moving forward

The difference between teams that plateau and those that bounce back higher lies in their willingness to examine what happened, honestly and intentionally.

Effective teams:

Ask better questions about every loss
Make learning public and persistent
Celebrate those who surface insights, not just successes

If you can shift your culture from loss-avoidant to learning-forward, defeats become data, fuel, and even a quiet kind of advantage. Every loss, when analyzed with honesty, is one less blind spot and one more step in the right direction.

Failure is only failure when you refuse to look at it. Otherwise, it’s necessary and invaluable research.

What are your tips for using failure as an opportunity?

cluttered items versus streamlined workflow

Why leaders waste time (and how AI might be able to fix that)

Leaders rarely waste time because they are disorganized or unmotivated. They waste time because they operate on outdated assumptions. They find themselves managing drama, re-explaining expectations, reacting to unclear priorities, and drowning in meetings that exist solely to compensate for broken processes. This is a reality-based approach to modern leadership.

As author Cy Wakeman says, “Suffering is optional.” The drama, confusion, and rework that fill your day are not the job. They’re noise around the job. For the first time in decades, we have a powerful way to eliminate that noise: AI. Not as a shiny object or a replacement for real leadership, but as a catalyst for clarity. It’s a way to remove the friction that steals your time, focus, and energy.

Let’s look at some of the biggest time-wasters for leaders, and how we can use AI to turn those chronic stressors into more streamlined workflows, so that we can focus on what matters most.

The five ways leaders waste time

Leadership roles have quietly ballooned into something unsustainable. Leaders are expected to be strategists, therapists, technical experts, project managers, communicators, and culture-shapers, all at once. When we break it down, most of the drains on a leader’s time fall into five patterns.

1. Solving the wrong problems

Many leaders spend their days firefighting symptoms instead of addressing root causes. They fix last-minute crises, rewrite team content, chase missing updates, and build one workaround after another. This might feel productive, but it’s a trap.

The real issue often isn’t the circumstance but how we think about it. Leaders frequently jump into action without first stepping back to ask: What problem actually needs solving here? AI can help you get clean data quickly, summarize what’s going on, and surface the root causes instead of just the symptoms.

2. Reclarifying expectations again and again

This one issue costs teams hundreds of hours every year. You explain a process. Then you explain it again. Then you find yourself explaining it once more in Slack, in meetings, and in follow-up emails. The lack of clear documentation is arguably one of the biggest causes of time wasting.

Ambiguity is a petri dish for drama. Clarity, on the other hand, sanitizes it. When expectations are fuzzy, team members fill in the gaps with their own stories and assumptions, leading to rework and frustration.

3. Managing emotions and drama

Leadership requires a high degree of emotional intelligence. However, there is a difference between productive emotional support and unnecessary emotional labor. Time spent navigating venting, spiraling conversations, and conflict triangulation is time stolen from high-impact work.

Drama is essentially emotional waste. It consists of the stories, assumptions, and narratives that steal focus from reality. While AI cannot fix human emotions, it can reduce the ambiguity and miscommunication that often spark drama in the first place.

4. Meetings that should have been a workflow

A shocking percentage of meetings exist simply to get updates, restate decisions, clarify next steps, or piece together scattered information.

When work is clear and processes are documented, the need for these kinds of meetings shrinks dramatically. Meetings can become what they are meant to be: forums for strategic discussion and collaborative problem-solving, not therapy sessions or complaint centers.

5. Delayed decisions

Leaders sometimes stall important decisions because they feel responsible for having perfect information. This drive for perfection leads to collecting more data, getting more input, or rewriting a message “just one more time.” This pursuit of certainty slows everything and everyone down.

Your circumstances are not the reason you cannot succeed. It’s your thinking about your circumstances. AI can support leaders with drafts, scenarios, and data-driven clarity so they feel confident making decisions sooner.

How AI fixes the time-wasting problem

It is here to remove friction so humans can lead with clarity, courage, and accountability. Here are some ways in which the right application of AI can transform leadership.

AI creates clean data and decisions

Leaders spend an enormous amount of time cleaning up information. AI can take on this burden by summarizing complex discussions, turning messy notes into clear documentation, and extracting decisions and next steps. It can also outline risks and tradeoffs for you. As clarity goes up, rework goes down. Teams get aligned faster, and leaders stop repeating themselves.

AI as a thinking partner

Every leader needs a sounding board. With AI, you can have one instantly. You can use AI to explore scenarios, challenge your own assumptions, generate strategic options, and refine your messaging. It helps reduce overthinking and analysis paralysis because you no longer start from a blank page. You start from a structured, thoughtful draft.

AI workflow automation shrinks meeting overload

Imagine a world with fewer, better meetings. AI can make that a reality by automating or streamlining weekly updates, agenda creation, post-meeting summaries, onboarding steps, and recurring project tasks. The result is fewer meetings, more momentum, and more breathing room for actual leadership work.

AI strengthens accountability

Accountability often becomes an emotional issue (“Why didn’t this get done?”) instead of an operational one (“Here is what we agreed to, documented clearly”). AI helps leaders create checklists, documentation, clear responsibilities, and action plans. When expectations are documented and transparent, accountability becomes objective, not personal.

AI reduces emotional load

Communicating as a leader can be hard. AI can support you by drafting difficult messages in neutral, factual language. It can help you remove emotional charge, eliminate assumptions, and rewrite escalation messages with clarity and calm. This helps leaders stay grounded and model the emotional neutrality that Reality-Based Leadership encourages.

Seven steps to get started

Ready to see a change? Small shifts can compound quickly. Try this simple plan to integrate AI into your leadership practice.

Day 1: Replace one status meeting with an async update generated by AI.
Day 2: Turn one chaotic process into a clear Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) using AI to help you draft it.
Day 3: Create your “AI executive assistant” prompt to help manage your schedule, communications, and priorities.
Day 4: Identify one recurring leadership task, like drafting a weekly report, and automate it with an AI tool.
Day 5: Use AI to draft a difficult or delicate communication, focusing on neutral and factual language.
Day 6: Have AI summarize your week’s activities and help you set clear priorities for the week ahead.
Day 7: Reflect. Where did drama decrease this week? Where did clarity increase?

Prompts to try

Here are some prompts leaders can use to reduce emotional waste, eliminate friction, and lead with clarity.

Clarifying the problem

“Here’s the situation I’m dealing with: [paste situation]. Help me identify the root cause, not just the symptoms. What problem should I actually be solving?”
“Before I jump into action, break this down into: what’s happening, what I know for sure, what assumptions I might be making, and my next best step.”

Setting clear expectations

“Create a clear, actionable set of expectations based on these goals and responsibilities. Make it concise, specific, and easy to understand: [paste info].”
“Here’s a process I’ve explained verbally multiple times: [paste process]. Turn it into a clean step-by-step SOP with owners, timelines, and success criteria.”
“Turn this Slack thread into a single-source-of-truth summary with decisions, next steps, owners, and deadlines: [paste thread].”

Reducing drama and emotional waste

“Rewrite this message in neutral, factual, drama-free language that removes emotion, judgment, and assumptions: [paste message].”
“Help me respond to this emotional message with calm clarity—compassionate but focused on facts and next steps: [paste message].”
“Create a script that helps redirect someone from venting to problem-solving using Reality-Based Leadership principles.”

Eliminating meetings

“Convert this weekly status meeting agenda into a fully async workflow with templates and update formats so the meeting becomes unnecessary.”
“Summarize this meeting transcript into: decisions, owners, deadlines, risks, and open questions: [paste transcript].”

Accelerating decisions

“I need to make a decision about: [topic]. Give me 3–5 options, the tradeoffs for each, and your recommendation based on the data.”
“Draft a ‘good enough’ version of this message that is clear, concise, and ready to send with minimal edits: [paste draft].”
“Generate a scenario analysis for these choices: [list], including risks, effort, ROI, and what happens if I delay.”

Strengthening accountability

“Turn these notes into a clear agreement with tasks, owners, success criteria, and due dates: [paste notes].”
“Create a RACI-style responsibility breakdown for this project based on the following info: [paste project details].”
“Rewrite this follow-up message so it’s direct, neutral, and grounded in documented expectations: [paste message].”

Reducing overload

“Summarize my week based on these notes and help me identify my top 5 priorities for next week: [paste notes].”
“Help me create a customized ‘AI Executive Assistant’ prompt that supports scheduling, message drafting, priority setting, and weekly reviews. Here’s my role: [describe role].”
“Organize these scattered notes into a clear plan with categories, deadlines, and delegated items: [paste notes].”

Reality-based leadership reminds us that the biggest cost in any organization is emotional waste. AI finally gives leaders the ability to reduce drama, increase clarity, speed up decision-making, and improve accountability. It helps eliminate expensive rework and stop the cycle of babysitting emotions. Let AI do the work that drains your time but does not require your unique talent.

Not all feedback is created equal

A lot of companies pride themselves in soliciting a continuous stream of feedback from team members. We’ve all seen post after post about the importance of employee engagement surveys. But let’s be honest: not all feedback is created equal, and not all feedback is helpful.

That might sound controversial, but it’s something I’ve come to believe strongly, especially after discovering Cy Wakeman’s Reality-Based Leadership philosophy. It’s a game changer for anyone who’s tired of the drama, the venting, and the endless cycles of “collaboration” or surveys that lead nowhere.

Here’s one of the core ideas that stuck with me: feedback from high-accountability people carries more weight.

Not all feedback deserves equal airtime

Giving all team members forums and opportunities to voice their opinion is absolutely crucial, so I’m not saying we ignore people. However, it may be time to stop putting every opinion on the same level when it comes to making decisions. There’s a big difference between feedback from someone who takes ownership, works through challenges, and stays focused on solutions versus someone who blames, deflects, and resists change.

If someone consistently shows up as a problem-solver and truth-teller, we absolutely want to hear what they think. If someone just wants to vent without taking action, that feedback is more noise that is much less actionable – or should be acted on. So when feedback comes from a high-accountability person, we should lean in. When it’s coming from someone who’s not taking ownership themselves, we need to view it through a different lens. Not to dismiss it, but to weigh it appropriately.

Venting isn’t healthy, but contagious

We’ve heard this take on venting many times: people “just need to get it out.” But most of the time, venting isn’t releasing energy. It’s actually counterproductive and spreading negativity to others, while augmenting your own. (Check out my post about it in a previous post, which you can check out here)

Venting reinforces the idea that our circumstances are more powerful than we are. That we’re victims of bad leadership, annoying teammates, or unfair systems. But what if, instead, we need to ask questions such as “What role did I play in this?”, “What can I do differently next time?”, “What do I know for sure?”, “How can I help?”

High-accountability people tend to vent less and reflect more. Their feedback usually comes with awareness and ideas for action. That’s the kind of input we value most, because it’s grounded in ownership, not offloading.

Be helpful, not judgy

Reality-Based Leadership reminds us that judgment adds nothing but curiosity and support can change everything. If a teammate is struggling, gossiping about their attitude helps no one. But asking, “How can I help you get back on track?” opens a door.

I try (and, admittedly, don’t always succeed) to be less reactive, and more curious. Less certain, more supportive. It’s amazing what shifts when you lead from that space, but it takes work.

And guess who tends to offer that kind of feedback? People who own their impact. High-accountability people. Again, their voice should carry more weight.

Assumptions fuel drama, while questions dismantle it

We’re all wired to make up stories. We fill in the gaps with narratives based on what we would do or how we see the world. But assumptions can often be a fast track to conflict.

When in doubt, ask more questions. “Can you help me understand?” goes a lot further than “Why did you do that?” Drama thrives on assumptions, so we need to use clarity as a way to squash it.

What’s just as powerful as redirecting your own instinct is helping others do the same. Assuming good intentions and focusing on what you know for sure will be empowering for you, but also invaluable to others who you help along the way.

High-accountability people question assumptions and seek clarity. That makes their feedback more trustworthy and actionable, because it’s grounded in curiosity and honesty, not assumptions and blame.

Focus on what you can control

This one’s simple, but not easy. You can’t control how others lead. You can’t control policies, platforms, your competitors, the economy, or personalities. You can control how you respond, how you show up, and how you hold yourself accountable.

When you live in that space, your energy changes. You go from frustrated to focused and from helpless to impactful.

High-accountability feedback always includes an element of self-awareness:
“I could’ve communicated this better, but I noticed that…”
“I see this challenge, and here’s an idea to address it…”

That kind of feedback is rare and incredibly valuable, and that’s why we should weigh it more heavily.

We all want cultures of accountability, clarity, and trust. But we don’t get there by treating every opinion the same, or by indulging in endless venting sessions. Instead, we get there by showing up with ownership, curiosity, and a clear understanding of what we can control and letting go of what we can’t.

So no, I don’t look at every piece of feedback equally. I pay more attention to those who lead with accountability. Because that’s the kind of culture we want to build.

What about you? Do you take everyone’s feedback equally into account?

How to get the most valuable feedback from your customers and prospects

Feedback is how you refine your product, shape your messaging, and uncover blind spots. But not all feedback is created equal. The most useful feedback doesn’t just confirm your assumptions or point out flaws, but it reveals intent, context, and patterns that help you make better decisions.

So how do you get that kind of feedback from customers who are busy and prospects who aren’t yet invested?

Let’s take a look.

Ask why

Too many feedback forms and surveys stop at surface-level questions:

“Did you like this feature?”
“Would you recommend us?”
“What didn’t work for you?”

While feedback that comes out of these questions can be useful, you may get even better insights by focusing on the why.

Ask:

What were you trying to accomplish?
Why did this feature help, or fail to help, you do that?
Why did you choose us over other options? Or why didn’t you?

You’ll uncover underlying motivations, not just reactions. And that’s what drives product clarity and positioning.

But a word of caution: how you ask why matters. If it comes off like you’re challenging the validity of someone’s feedback, especially if they’re voicing frustration, they may get defensive. Worse, they might double down on a perception that your product lacks something crucial, even if it’s a misunderstanding or misalignment.

Instead, approach with genuine curiosity and a tone of collaboration. Frame it like, “I want to make sure I fully understand so we can get better at solving that problem.” That keeps the door open to dialogue and positions you as a partner, not a skeptic.

Talk to the extremes

It’s tempting to focus on your “average” customer. But the most valuable insights often come from:

Your biggest fans: They can articulate your differentiators and help you understand your true value.
Your toughest critics: They reveal gaps you’ve ignored or underestimated. Remember Bill Gates’ comment ““Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
Your lost prospects: They tell you where you missed the mark and what mattered most in their decision.

Build regular cadences to talk to all three. Exit interviews with lost deals are especially underrated.

How to get lost prospects to talk to you

Reaching out after a deal is lost can feel awkward, but when handled with the right tone, it can actually build long-term goodwill.

Lead with humility and transparency. Try:
“Thanks again for considering us. We know you made the best decision for your team. We’d love to learn how we can improve for the future. Would you be open to a short conversation?”
Offer value in return. For example:
“We’re refining our onboarding process and messaging. If you’re open to sharing your thoughts, we’ll send you a preview of what we’ve changed based on customer feedback.”
Keep it low-effort and non-salesy. Clarify upfront:
“This isn’t a sales call, just a chance to learn from your experience.”

How to get to the real reasons

Often, the reason prospects give (“pricing,” “missing feature”) is just the surface. To uncover the deeper drivers, use open-ended prompts like:

“Walk me through your decision-making process and what mattered most to your team.”
“Were there any trade-offs you had to make?”
“Was there anything that gave you pause about our product?”
“If you could have changed one thing about our offering, what would it have been?”

Don’t be afraid of a little silence. Often, the most honest feedback comes after the first, more “polite” answer.

Observe behavior

What people say they want and how they actually behave often diverge. This is especially true in SaaS.

Let’s say you launch a new page builder in your CMS. During interviews, both developers and non-technical users express excitement.

But once it’s live, your data shows that power users continue making update right in the HTML, non-technical users still submit help tickets for formatting issues, or bounce rates from the feature documentation are high.

That’s a red flag: behavior doesn’t match enthusiasm. Why? Maybe:

The interface wasn’t intuitive enough.
They weren’t confident using it without training.
It didn’t accommodate the custom components your developers already rely on.
Governance concerns are forcing users back to IT for review anyway.

This kind of insight won’t surface through surveys alone. It shows up in click paths, support logs, and feature adoption data.

So instead of just asking, “Do you find the page builder helpful?”, combine that feedback with behavioral signals:

Are users completing their tasks independently?
Are certain roles ignoring the feature altogether?
Is usage consistent across departments?

In the CMS world, watching how content is actually created, updated, and published is often more revealing than what users say about the tool.

Ask open-ended questions

Instead of asking “What do you like about our product?”, ask:

“Tell me about the last time you used our product to solve a problem.”
“Walk me through how you currently manage [X] and where you get stuck.”
“Walk me through a workaround that you use just to avoid a specific feature.”
“What’s the process like when someone new joins the web team. How easy is it for them to get up to speed?”
“How does the system support (or hinder) collaboration between departments?”
“If your system disappeared tomorrow, what would you miss, and what wouldn’t you?”
“What’s something you wish your system could help you do that it currently can’t?”
“Can you tell me about a moment when using the tool made you look like a hero internally?”

Stories provide context. They help you see how your product fits into real workflows and where it falls short. They also help you uncover language you can use in your own messaging.

Make feedback-giving easy and low-risk

Don’t expect people to write a novel or get on a one hour call with you. Offer simple ways to share:

A single question in a pop-up: “What’s one thing that would have made this page more useful?”
A quick check-in email: “Mind hopping on a 15-minute call to give us some honest feedback?”
Embedded tools like Hotjar or FullStory that let you capture input as users interact.

Also, avoid making feedback feel like a trap. Let people speak freely, anonymously if needed, and make it clear there are no wrong answers.

Quick tip: While I’m generally not against having an AI notetaker on my calls, I try to read the room, and when I feel that I would get more honest feedback if it was just me and the customer “off the record”, I turn it off. You can also just ask if the customer would feel more comfortable without the notetaker.

Separate the signal from the noise

When you start collecting feedback at scale from users, prospects, support tickets, user groups, and internal stakeholders, it can get noisy fast. Everyone has ideas, and everyone has “must-haves.” Obviously, trying to implement everything leads to a bloated product that loses focus.

Imagine you start getting feedback like this from multiple content contributors across departments:

“We need more design flexibility on our pages.”
“Users wants more layout options without going through the web team.”

This can quickly trigger alarm bells:

Should we allow drag-and-drop layouts?
Do we need to revamp the entire templating system?
Should non-technical users have full control over design?

But before diving into solutions, pause to ask: What are they actually trying to do?

You conduct a few interviews and review support tickets. This could look like this:

Most users aren’t asking for pixel-perfect design control. They just want to add a call-to-action or rearrange content blocks.
Others are frustrated because they don’t understand how to use existing layout options that are available but maybe not easy to find.
A few are working around limitations by pasting formatted content from Word or Canva, which breaks accessibility standards.

The signal may be “Non-technical users want to feel empowered to make their content look professional, but the current tools are hard to find or unintuitive.” But the noise could be “Requests for total design freedom, when in reality, that would lead to governance chaos.”

This separation will provide more clarity and lets you implement the right set of features and enhancements without overcorrecting or deviating from your product philosophy.

In summary:

Look for patterns: What themes come up repeatedly across roles and industries?
Use jobs-to-be-done thinking: What core problems are people trying to solve?
Prioritize based on impact vs. effort and alignment with your strategy.

Great feedback isn’t just a list of requests but set of clues that need to be interpreted carefully.

Close the loop

The easiest way to encourage feedback? Show people it matters.

Let users know what changed based on their input (these are huge wins for you and them!)
Thank them personally when their insight led to a fix or improvement.
Involve your customers in early access programs and beta testing.

Picture this. A customer filed a support ticket for a use case that your product could not support at the time. Now, months later, you have a new feature that can help the user do what they need to do. You send them a personal message, thanking them for their feedback and informing them that this new feature is now for use in beta. Ask them to test it and let you know how it works dor them. Who knows, this may even result in a user story for your next blog post or webinar as a real world example of how customer feedback drives your roadmap.

Be curious, not defensive

When someone tells you your product didn’t work for them, or that they chose a competitor, it’s tempting to explain or defend. Resist the urge.

Instead, get curious, dig deeper, and ask more questions

The most valuable feedback doesn’t stroke your ego. The best products are built by people who know how to listen with open minds and strategic intent.

The bias for action when certainty is out of reach

In an earlier post, “Re-considering the No,” I reflected on how easily we default to no, especially in moments that require change, risk, or vulnerability. That post was about the internal calculus we make when faced with the unknown, and how saying yes, even if it’s a tentative, nervous yes, can open doors to creativity, connection, and possibility.

But what happens after the yes? If “Re-considering the No” was about cracking the door open, today’s reflection is about what it takes to actually step through it. That next step requires cultivating something I’ve been hearing more and more in recent conversations: a bias for action.

The hidden cost of overthinking

In my experience, we tend to reward intellectual rigor. We value planning, stakeholder input, and alignment, and rightfully so. But sometimes, those very strengths can often morph into stagnation. We get caught in analysis loops and hypothetical what-ifs. We seek consensus when what’s needed is the courage to make a move. We become so focused on getting it “right” that we end up not doing anything at all.

A bias for action counters that by asking: What if starting imperfectly is actually the most strategic move I can make?

And here’s the truth most of us know deep down: clarity tends to come from action, not the other way around. The project plan doesn’t reveal the sticking points but the first iteration does. The meeting doesn’t uncover misalignment, but the actual collaboration does.

Motion as a catalyst for learning

I may be stating the obvious: A bias for action doesn’t mean acting without thinking. It just means that we’re using motion as a mechanism for discovery. This can happen in many different ways. For example, you might spin up a prototype for something that’s not on the roadmap yet, ship an early version of a new feature and let usage data influence the next iteration, or put yourself on the hook for a webinar before you’ve done all the research needed.

Do these actions carry risk? Of course. But they can also be the most effective way to uncover the next step.

As Amelia Earhart once said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity.”

This simple truth reminds us that the first move, however small, is often the hardest. But once momentum is on your side, everything changes.

Leading through action

As a leader, modeling a bias for action is one of the most powerful ways to build agility and resilience within your team. When your team sees you moving forward, and making adjustments when needed, they feel permission to do the same.

I’ve watched more than once how action can spawn energy. One draft inspires another, one customer outreach reveals a new opportunity, one slightly awkward team experiment can be the origin of a new practice or services offering. These moments don’t happen because the idea was perfect but because someone had the courage to move.

Leadership often requires creating conditions in which movement and action is encouraged and even expected, even if you don’t always have all of the answers.

As a Cy Wakeman fan, I like to remind myself of this quote: “Stop arguing with reality, and start leading what’s next.” It reframes change from something to fear into something to harness.

Reconnecting to “Re-considering the No”

In “Re-considering the No,” I wrote about how saying no too soon can rob us of growth. But now I’ll add this: Saying yes and then not acting is just a slower version of the same problem.

We tell ourselves we’re on board, give a thumbs up in Slack, nod in meetings, or add to an idea. But if those ideas never get acted on, if the yes never becomes movement, then we’ve only postponed the no. A yes without action is like planting a seed and never watering it. A bias for action is what turns that yes into progress.

Don’t get me wrong. I need to listen to my own advice more frequently and ask myself “Is there something I’ve said yes to but haven’t moved on?” or “What’s a small step I can take immediately to build momentum?”.

When in doubt, move

Action is not about busyness or bravado, but about building momentum, no matter how big or small. It’s about trusting that movement and direction will teach you more than inaction or delay. So next time you find yourself nodding at a new idea, agreeing with a bold suggestion, or sensing that yes rising in your throat, commit to taking the next step, and then take it.

What about you? How do you practice bias for action?