#54 You're the voice of reason for everyone but you
You're the person people call before they make a big move.
The sober second opinion. The one who asks the question everyone else was too polite to. The friend who says "that's a hope, not a plan" — and means it kindly.
You're very good at this. For other people.
Here's what I see with senior operators, over and over:
The rigour you bring to everyone else's decisions vanishes the second the decision is about your stuff.
You'd never let a colleague run a search on "something will turn up." But that's quietly your plan. You tell your team hope isn't a strategy — then you go home and run one, betting your next move on being the exception to every rule you'd enforce on anyone else.
Someone I spoke to recently was coaching a laid-off former report through her search. Brilliantly.
Telling her: sort your positioning before you apply. Don't wait until you're desperate to network. Don't put all your eggs in one basket or hold out hope for a role that’s not in writing.
Every word, correct.
Then I asked about his own plan. He'd been "meaning to update the LinkedIn." He'd "start properly in the new year." He was fairly sure his old VP would "sort something out" when the time came.
He heard it the second he said it out loud.
You don't need more discipline. You've already got it — you just spend all of it on everyone but yourself. The whole game is pointing that judgment inward for once.
This runs deep if you came up in Big Tech. You were rewarded for years for being the one who pressure-tests the plan — who finds the hole, who won't sign off on the optimistic case. But your reps are aimed at the business - with data and rigour supported by others.
Nobody stress-tested your career the way you stress-tested a launch. So a decision that’s entirely yours is the one you’ve got the least reps on. And thinking “I’ll be the exception and it will all come together” always feels reasonable from the inside, because you know and understand your special circumstances.
One thing to try this week:
Take your real plan for your next move and say it out loud as if a friend had brought it to you.
Where would you push? What would you call optimistic? Which assumption would you make them defend before they left the room?
Then defend it. Be your own voice of reason for ten minutes — the one you are for everyone else. It's uncomfortable. That's how you know it's working.
Here's the limit I see when folks do this themselves - you can only pressure-test what you can already see. The ten-minute version catches a surprising amount. But it can’t surface blind spots.
In the workshop next week, the blind spots are what we’re looking at. Wednesday 30 September, free, 60 minutes — the framework I use to find where a senior search is actually stalling: why your Big Tech stories land differently the moment the person across the table wasn't in the room, why more activity won't fix slow traction, and which parts of this you can sort yourself versus which you can't.
[Grab a spot → register here]
Chat soon,
Mel