#46 Three good directions is its own kind of stuck

"I think I could go the Director route at another big company. But there's a VP role at a startup that's got my attention. And honestly, part of me just wants something smaller where I'm building again."

Same person. One breath. Three directions.

I hear a version of this almost every week right now, and it never sounds like confusion. It sounds like someone with too many good answers. Every option is real. Every one is genuinely them. So they keep all three alive — a little networking here, a few applications there, a story stretched to cover everyone.

And it lands nowhere. A story built to fit three directions is specific to none of them.

The person above had been "exploring" all three for months. What he actually had was three half-built pitches and a quiet, growing suspicion that he was the problem.

He wasn't. He didn't need more options. He needed to pick one — because until he did, he couldn't even name what he was selling.

What makes hedging so expensive isn't just spreading yourself thin. Each of those directions asks you to solve a different problem. "I scale operations" sounds like one capability — but scaling ops inside a 40,000-person company and doing it at a 40-person startup are barely the same job. One is taming a machine that already runs; the other is building it while it moves. Same words, different problem, different proof, different person the hiring manager pictures in the seat.

So the story you stretch to cover all three fits none of them. Each person across the table is listening for their version of the problem — and yours is pitched at the average of three. Nobody hires the average.

You can be compelling about one problem in one context. Not three at once.

One thing to try this week: of your live options, pick the single one you'd back yourself on if you had to walk into an interview tomorrow. For the summer only, act as if it's the only one. Not a forever decision — an experiment in what changes when your effort points one way instead of four.

And if you genuinely can't pick — that's usually the most useful thing to work on.

Chat soon,

Mel

P.S. There's a summer version of this that's pure attention, not strategy: half-searching from a sun lounger while half-present with your family is the worst of both. Be fully in it or fully out. The in-between is where the whole month disappears.