Susan Drumm says managers who obsess over spotting every risk can paralyze their teams. A VP named Mark wanted to see every step before approving anything, which killed momentum and discouraged new ideas. Teams need movement and clear direction, not perfect certainty.
Chapters
You've double-checked everything. You've triple-checked the backup plan. You've run the scenarios, outlined the risks, and now you're still stuck. You see what could go wrong before anyone else. It's your superpower. You protect the team from blind spots, from failure, from embarrassment. But when planning turns into pausing, when your team keeps looking at you waiting for the green light and you're still scanning the horizon for what-ifs, you're not leading anymore. You're stalling. And here's the part no one says out loud: that caution, it doesn't just hold you back, it slows the whole system down. I worked with a VP once, we'll call him Mark. Brilliant strategist, loyal, detail-oriented, but every big initiative sat in his review limbo because unless he could see every step, he couldn't say yes. And his team, well, they stopped bringing ideas. They assumed the answer was always not yet. Here's the thing, there's a difference between being thoughtful and being frozen. Your team doesn't need guarantees. They need direction and they need to see you move. Leadership isn't certainty, it's clarity in motion.
