Building Something without Instructions
Partial instructions and hidden agendas sabotage your team (and your sanity). Here’s why:
I used to wonder why some perfectly capable employees floundered under my leadership—even after I’d given them “crystal-clear” job descriptions. (Spoiler: They weren’t that clear.)
It took me years to realize: if I never told them the secret mission—the hidden reason I’d hired them—then we were both doomed to frustration.
The heartbreak is real. These are well-meaning folks who were genuinely trying to do good work, but I—Captain Mastermind—forgot to mention the actual plan that existed in my head.
Here are three stories (names changed to protect the innocent) that still make me cringe, laugh, and vow never to keep my hidden motives buried again.
1. Jennifer, the “Business Analyst”—AKA Undercover C-Suite Star
Jennifer arrived with an MBA-level brain and a knack for fancy flowcharts. I told her, “Work with the business units, create efficiencies, automate processes, blah blah blah.”
A pretty standard gig, right?
But I also expected her to charm them into adopting new software, fix their antiquated procedures, and modernize them with zero pushback. In my mind, she had all the persuasion and financial analysis superpowers that I typically relied on. I figured she’d magically read my mind, build trust across silos, and essentially function like a C-suite exec…all without me saying a word.
No shocker: Jennifer struggled.
She got zero buy-in, the departments never changed their behaviors, and morale plummeted. Suddenly, she was “ineffective” because—get this—I’d never told her I wanted her to lead like a top executive. Her job description said “Business Analyst,” but her secret mission was “Change Agent, Confidence Builder, and Catalyst for Culture Shift.”
That’s a bit more than an Excel wizard with a side of mild persuasion!
The Lesson
When your real ask is for someone to do “futuristic leadership jujitsu,” you’d better state that up front. Otherwise, they’ll keep operating at the job description’s “Run daily reports” level, wondering why you’re annoyed they aren’t conquering entire kingdoms.
2. Sam, the Writer—AKA “Wait, We Actually Want Speaking Gigs?!”
Sam came on board with a Master’s in English and the ability to make me sound like Shakespeare instead of an overcaffeinated 6th grader. He wrote guides, blogs, whitepapers—good stuff.
Our email list soared from a few hundred to 20,000. Leads trickled in, and the blog basically became a credit union meltdown survival kit. Life was grand.
Except… I had a deeper motive. All this content was secretly supposed to funnel me into high-paying speaking gigs: strategic planning sessions, keynote addresses, the whole “I’ll stand on stage like Tony Robbins but with less teeth whitening” scenario.
One day, I got that familiar “Am I getting real value?” itch. A horrifying thought dawned on me: I forgot to tell Sam the ultimate goal.
When I finally fessed up, Sam literally laughed out loud: “Boy, I am failing you miserably. We’ve booked maybe two planning sessions in the last five years!”
I facepalmed. After five years of perfect blogs, we had negligible bookings. Sam felt terrible. I felt terrible. We’d both just realized the content was never angled to draw in event organizers. Once he pivoted and wrote specifically for that mission? Boom! We booked more strategy gigs in two weeks than in the previous half-decade.
The Lesson
If you don’t share “Hey, I need this writing to land me on conference stages,” don’t be shocked when you aren’t headlining. People can’t deliver on what they don’t know is important.
3. The Executive Assistant Shuffle—AKA “Kill Them with Kindness (and Intel)”
The next fiasco: my chronic inability to keep an executive assistant. I hired four in three years. Every single one quit or hated life while working for me. I’d given them the usual tasks—board minutes, travel booking, expense reports—nothing out of the ordinary.
But behind the scenes, I secretly wanted them to be my stealth morale operative. I needed a kindhearted ninja who could “kill everyone around me with kindness” and dig up the honest feedback no one dared share with me.
(Because, let’s be real, I’ve been told I’m not always the easiest person to approach.)
Four EAs came and went before I finally spelled out the truth: “Hey, I need someone who can be the office’s empathy machine, gather the unspoken angst or ideas, and safely bring them to me.”
The second I said it out loud, I realized I also had to change. And once I found someone who fit that bill, she became indispensable. She disarmed people, they’d confide in her, and I’d get the raw data I needed to grow. Over time (like 5-6 years), I learned to lead from understanding rather than intimidation. But it all started by articulating the real mission.
The Lesson
Give staff all the puzzle pieces—especially the unglamorous stuff like “I’m not approachable, so can you fix that for me?”—and watch them actually solve the puzzle.
The Cost of Hush-Hush Missions
Why do these secret agendas wreak such havoc?
Resentment and confusion: It’s like building a rocket from IKEA instructions—except IKEA, at least, shows you a tiny picture of the end result. Without clarity, your employees chug along, keep hitting walls, and feel they can never satisfy you.
Apathy and low morale: People want to excel and be appreciated. But if the “win” keeps moving or if you never reveal the real reason for their role, they’ll eventually do the bare minimum. If there’s no shared success measure, they won’t invest their heart.
Frustration and fear: As the founder, you watch good people flounder, or worse, burn out and quit, and you’re convinced they’ve “failed you.” Truthfully, you never gave them the actual blueprint. It eats at you, your culture, and your bottom line.
The Emotional Toll of Founder Guilt and Missed Potential
There’s nothing quite like the gut punch of seeing your best hires quietly lose steam, or entire teams spin their wheels. Meanwhile, you’re furious they aren’t performing miracles. They’re wondering why they can’t make you happy no matter how hard they try. Anxiety, blame, turnover—it’s a sweaty mess.
Believe me, I’ve been there. And it’s 50% infuriating, 50% comedic. (To keep my sense of humor, I picture all of us desperately rummaging through half-translated IKEA instructions, building random dresser drawers without a single clue how they fit the entire design. “Wait, why do I have extra screws? And what the heck is this leftover piece?”)
Final Takeaway: Spell It Out
If you do one thing after reading this, let it be this:
Ask yourself if you’ve ever given your people the real reason you hired them.
Maybe you wrote some standard tasks, but the meaty, intangible “secret mission” never left your head. Do you want them to:
Charm the CFO into budget changes?
Win you speaking engagements?
Gather the personal drama so you can course-correct?
Champion a complete rebrand while they’re “just a marketing coordinator”?
Write it down. Then have a (slightly awkward but necessary) conversation: “Hey, there’s more to your role than X, Y, Z.”
Sure, you might feel silly admitting you never said it before. But trust me—once they know, they can actually deliver.
Because people can’t build what you want if you never give them the instructions.
Until next time—
Disruption with a side of humor,
Kirk Drake
