If you’re the boss and you say, “What if…,” somebody else hears, “Get it done by Friday.”
You were thinking out loud. Your team heard a directive. And somewhere in your company, someone is on day four of an initiative that will die on Thursday because it was “just an idea.”
My team has a safe word for me in these situations. It’s “guardrails,” because I am an idea machine, and I forget that when the founder says it, nobody hears me processing. They hear priority.
The expensive part isn’t even the wasted work. It’s that your team stops reading the business and starts reading you. They quit asking what the strategy says matters and start asking what you’re excited about today, what you’re worried about, what’s going to get your attention. Eventually they stop taking initiative at all, because they don’t trust their own read anymore.
The higher you go, the more your attention costs. Your curiosity becomes work for other people. Your irritation becomes urgency. Your preference becomes standard. Sometimes it’s excitement driving it. Sometimes it’s fear, or wanting excellence, or, honestly, being the person everybody looks to feels pretty damn good. Don’t beat yourself up. Just notice it, because once you see it, you can stop feeding it.
In this episode
- Why a good idea is not automatically a priority, and what my team checks before anything gets traction
- The difference between noticing something and making it important, and the five seconds that decide which one you did
- Why I now take an idea to AI first, so it has to survive before it becomes anybody’s Tuesday
The idea to save:
Noticing something and making it important are different leadership acts. You don’t have to stop having ideas (God knows I won’t). You need a beat between “I noticed this” and “everybody needs to do something about this.”
Before an idea goes into Slack or a hallway conversation, try this with AI: “Here’s an idea I just had. We’re currently focused on X, Y, and Z. Help me think through what pursuing this would cost us in time, attention, and opportunity. Should I do it now, schedule it later, or put it in the parking lot?”
AI isn’t making the decision. It’s putting a little friction between your excitement and everybody else’s Tuesday.
Try this this week:
The next time an idea hits, wait a beat before you say it to anybody who works for you. Park it. Run it past AI or sit with it for a few days, then see which ones are still standing.
Want the quick takes and the things I’m noticing before they become episodes? Get on the insider list at hellodon.live/insider. Think of it as the first room before any of this reaches the rest of the world.
Chapters
- 00:00 When “What if” lands as “By Friday”
- 01:45 The idea popcorn machine
- 03:00 Your team starts reading you instead of the business
- 05:00 The beat before you say it out loud
- 05:45 AI as the first room you think out loud in
My team has a safe word for me, and it’s “guardrails.”
Related episodes
- Ep. 210, The Jackass in the Room Is You: the flip side of this one, what happens to your team’s initiative when the founder is the one reacting.
- Ep. 190, Stop Asking AI to Be Your Business Therapist: how to use AI as a thinking partner without handing it your feelings.
- Ep. 201, Why Teaching AI Your Voice First Might Be the Wrong Strategy: getting AI to understand how you decide, not just how you sound.
