The difference one word makes

Some weeks you execute the plan. This week, the plan arrived Monday morning in an email and the job became building a new one in four days.

A senior leader asked a direct question: how will we improve our delivery? My workstream owns the answer. The week became a series of conversations — a joint session across all five delivery workstream leads, individual follow-ups with each of them, a community of practice lean coffee, and conversations today with leads from parts of the programme I don't normally work alongside. The best weeks feel like this: more questions than answers, but the questions getting sharper.

One thread that kept surfacing was roles and responsibilities. Scaling is good; it also blurs lines. Cluster leads are a relatively new layer, and it's not always clear where their accountability ends and delivery managers' begins. We started mapping the gaps and overlaps this week. Some of the thinking is now in Confluence — not finished, not all mine, but out in the open. The approach is borrowed from Adam Grant's Hidden Potential: ask for advice, not feedback.

The thing I keep reflecting on going into next week's SLT session is Grant's contrast between imposter syndrome and a growth mindset. Imposter syndrome says: "I don't know what I'm doing, and it's only a matter of time before everyone finds out." A growth mindset says: "I don't know what I'm doing yet — it's only a matter of time before I figure it out." One word. Different posture entirely. That's where I want the playback to come from.

Linked notes

• 2026-05-29 Hidden Potential — Adam Grant
• 2026-05-29 Tiny Experiments — Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Lesson learned

The difference between imposter syndrome and a growth mindset is one word: yet. The same uncertainty, framed as temporary rather than permanent, changes what's possible.