The quiet sabotage of progress – and how I lead against it
Everyone loves the Steve Jobs interview story.
He’d meet the candidate himself. Then he’d walk around the building, talking to everyone they met—gathering impressions, hearing concerns, collecting input. Then came the second interview, now shaped by this chorus of voices.
It’s a heartwarming tale. The great visionary, involving the whole team. So thoughtful. So democratic. So… safe.
But let’s be honest.
When you’re making a strategic hire—especially at leadership level—there are always going to be trade-offs. Strengths and weaknesses. No one comes in perfectly formed. At some point, you’re not choosing the smoothest fit. You’re making a call between risk and opportunity.
And that’s the difference between a leader and a consensus-seeker. A golden leader, in my eyes, is the one who dares to make the bet. Someone who says: ”This person might ruffle feathers, but they might also be the best damn decision we make this year.” And then owns it. Fully.
Because while input has its place, true leadership is about direction. It’s about creating momentum. And momentum requires one thing above all else: someone who dares to say, “Go.”
what it looks like when you lead for real
Let me tell you how I work.
If I lead a team, I don’t just sit and wait for people to show initiative. I actively promote it. I look for people with agency, people who want to make something better—not because they were told to, but because they feel a personal pull to improve, create, build.
When I spot that spark, I work with it. I help shape it into something tangible. We discuss the idea. We formulate the plan. We break it down into something we can actually test and iterate on. If it’s not completely doomed from the outset, I’ll help turn it into something real. And then we build consensus around it—not before.
Sometimes the ideas won’t work. That’s part of the deal. That’s the cost of motion. But it’s also how progress happens. You try things. You test boundaries. You take a bet, and you learn from the outcome, whatever it is.
Let me give you a few examples.
At one place I worked, we were at an absolute standstill. Our work relied on a core engine—critical infrastructure that was owned by another team. That team had the power. But over time, they had developed a culture of extreme caution. They were operating under the unspoken rule: if anything goes wrong, they’ll get blamed. So their defence mechanism became perfectionism. Nothing was allowed to change unless it was already perfect. Which meant, in practice, that nothing ever changed.
Meanwhile, our own work was drowning in technical debt. We were building workarounds, patching problems that should never have existed in the first place, simply because we couldn’t touch the engine. And everyone around us had settled into consensus: “Don’t touch that team. Don’t interfere.” They had, I kid you not, a two-year plan to gradually restructure the engine—and we were supposed to just wait.
But we didn’t.
One of my team members came to me and said, “We need access. We need to make reusable changes, not just custom hacks.” And we started working on it. The backlash came fast: “It can’t be done.” “You’ll break the engine.” “I’ll quit if you go ahead.” “This is my domain.” But we didn’t back down.
We weren’t reckless—we listened. We invited their input. We asked, “What would it take to make this safe for you?” Could they review all proposals? Own the acceptance tests? Hold a final say on every commit? Yes. Yes to all of it.
Bit by bit, we unlocked the barriers. Eventually, we were granted limited access to contribute—under their supervision. And slowly, we built a new way of working: not with endless workarounds, but permanent, reusable improvements.
It wasn’t popular. But it worked. And over time, that new approach became the default.
In another company, I encountered a different kind of friction—this time between departments. A development team I worked with felt completely alienated from the rest of the organisation. They believed, with some justification, that they were being routinely undermined by the sales department. Sales would make promises to customers—often cutting across product constraints or usability standards—just to close the deal. And the developers were left to scramble.
But what was more worrying was the culture that grew around it. No one dared to talk to sales. They were seen as unreachable. Sacred. Too powerful to challenge. So instead of problem-solving, the organisation settled into a passive churn of complaints. The frustration had nowhere to go.
And here’s the quiet killer: everyone had silently agreed to live with it. There was an unwritten consensus—don’t challenge sales, don’t try to fix it, just complain to each other and move on. That consensus wasn’t malicious—it was self-protection. But it guaranteed nothing would change.
When I joined, I didn’t charge in. I sat down with the developers and asked: “What would make you feel safe having these conversations?” And gradually, as they realised I was serious, they started to open up. They told me how they’d want to approach the conversation, what they wished sales understood, and how they believed things could work better.
Once we had that clarity, we moved. And it wasn’t just me. The team stepped up. I facilitated the first workshops—but it was their voices, their input, their perspective that led the dialogue. I watched them find their footing, find their confidence, and ultimately find common ground with the people they once avoided.
Soon enough, what started as cautious, structured conversation turned into active collaboration. Relationships formed. Alignment happened. And in the end, I found myself—just a director—having regular strategic talks with the VP of Sales, because the trust had spread upward too.
The transformation wasn’t mine. I made the space. But it was the team that walked into it and changed the game.
What I never accept on my teams is passivity. If you’re not bringing insight, then bring drive. If you’re not bringing drive, then bring a relentless will to make something better. But if you have none of those things, I’ll be honest: you won’t last long. Not in one of my management teams.
Because when someone has an idea, I want it tested. I want to see the prototype. I want to push it to see if it breaks. We’ll bloody well whip that horse until it won’t ride no more.
And while they do that, I’m in the background doing the curling. I sweep the ice, remove the obstacles. I shield them from the politics, the noise, the naysayers. I make sure their proposal gets a fair shot, that their momentum has a chance to prove itself.
Because I’ve seen too many good people and too many good ideas die quietly in organisations that didn’t know how to handle initiative. I’ve watched smart, driven, creative minds shrink back because they weren’t protected, because the culture pushed them down.
That’s not acceptable.
Not in any organisation I lead.
what you can do next
Let me offer one final reflection—especially if you’re in a leadership role yourself.
There’s a tendency I’ve noticed, especially in large organisations: leaders who wait. They sit still and wait for direction from above. Wait for someone senior to say, “Can you look into this?” or “We need action here.”
But leadership isn’t reactive.
In the same way I expect my direct reports to bring me ideas, energy, and forward motion, the people above me expect the same. It’s not always explicit—but it’s real. They want to see someone who can say, “Here’s what I see. Here’s what I propose. Here’s how we move.”
You won’t always be right. Your ideas won’t always land. But you will be seen as someone who takes ownership. Someone who’s not waiting to be told.
Stephen King, one of the world’s most successful authors, once said: “I’m actually a very, very bad author. What I do is volume.” He writes hundreds of stories. Only a few make it to his editors. Even fewer make it to readers. But by producing relentlessly, by giving himself space to fail, he makes sure that the few that land—really land.
That’s the mindset we need to foster. Let people move. Let yourself move. Allow for flawed starts and false turns—because the perfect plan is a mirage. Progress comes through friction and course correction.
So look around.
Where’s the energy in your team? Who’s got an idea they’re sitting on? What small thing could you push forward, right now, without waiting for approval?
That’s where you start.
And then you protect that motion. Feed it. Build around it.
Because in the end, leadership is not about smoothing everything over.
It’s about pushing the few ideas that deserve to live—and refusing to let them die in silence.
Development | Portfolio | Innovation 
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