Stick the landing
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My blood was boiling and my poker face malfunctioned.
I was a first-time CEO hearing about an issue that, on first glance, had serious implications for our business.
Everything I was thinking, the people in front of me were seeing.
I was doing everything to signal the last thing I wanted them to do: be fearful of bringing the CEO problems.
I didn't handle it well.
For weeks afterward I noticed the difference. Updates arrived a little later. Bad news came a little softer. The edges had been smoothed before anything reached me.
Without meaning to I'd trained my team to protect me from the truth.
In gymnastics, there's a phrase: stick the landing.
The athlete flips through the air with power, grace and complexity. Onlookers hold their breath for the final moment that determines everything.
Did they wobble? Did they step forward? Or did they plant both feet with certainty?
That final second is what counts.
I didn't create the conditions for my team to stick the landing.
And without that, no CEO can do their job properly.
As CEOs, we don't just run on effort. We run on information. It’s our oxygen and in most cases it’s our early warning system.
Most CEOs I work with don't suffer from a lack of intelligence in their business.
They suffer from a lack of signal clarity and it’s expensive.
When I look at their teams, I see smart and hardworking people. But when it comes to delivering the right information, at the right time, in the right way, they rarely stick the landing.
And the flow-on effects are real. They cause hesitation and second guessing and this leads to fighting the wrong fires and missing the quiet opportunities that require a faster call.
The real reason your team distorts information
Most teams don't filter information out of malice.
They filter it out of fear.
Fear of disappointing you. Fear of looking incompetent. Fear of being the messenger who gets blamed for the news they're carrying.
So here's the question worth sitting with: When someone brings you difficult information, what's the first thing you communicate?
Relief that you now know? Or frustration that it exists?
Your micro-reactions train your organisation.
If your team senses volatility when bad news arrives, they buffer it. They smooth the edges. They time it differently. If they sense steadiness, they accelerate it.
The shift I encourage is simple. When bad news arrives, slow your reaction deliberately even if internally you’re recalibrating. Say, ‘Thank you for bringing this early.’
You're teaching them that early visibility earns respect.
Over time, that saves you time. It saves you money. It protects momentum.
Because problems shrink in daylight. And the ones that don't get surfaced early have a way of becoming the ones that define your tenure.
Teaching decision-ready reporting
Team’s tend to think that their job is to pass information upward.
In reality, their job is to prepare information for decision. That's a different level of ownership entirely.
Early in someone's career, reporting looks like this: ‘Here's what happened.’
As people move into more senior roles, reporting evolves: ‘Here's what happened. Here's what it means. Here are the options.’
Notice the evolution. Not more data. More thinking.
If you want your team to consistently stick the landing, make the standard explicit.
You might say: ‘When you bring me something important, I want three things — the signal, the implication, and your recommendation.’
Signal. Implication. Recommendation.
It’s simple, practical, repeatable and most importantly, this saves you cognitive load.
Instead of extracting insight through questioning, you can focus on your job: Making great decisions.
I worked with a CEO who ran a fast-growing logistics business. Her leadership team were diligent, good people who worked hard and cared about outcomes.
Every time an issue surfaced, she found herself running a forensic interview just to understand what had actually happened and what it meant. Meetings that should have taken twenty minutes ran into hours, if not days.
Decisions that should have been made on Tuesday were being made on Friday.
She was starved of the right information, at the right time, in the right format.
Once she reset the standard (signal, implication and recommendation) the change was immediate.
Not because her team got smarter. Because they finally understood what she actually needed from them.
That's the thing about clarity. It's generous. It tells people exactly how to succeed.
Removing the political filter
This one is harder and doable.
Information softens as it travels up a hierarchy. Edges get removed. Tone gets adjusted. Numbers get rounded in optimism.
This often doesn’t come from a place of dishonesty, more from a desire for alignment.
But alignment without truth is fragile.
One way to address this is to separate the data from the emotion.
You might say: ‘Give me the raw numbers first. Then we'll talk about how we feel about them.’
That signals that truth is welcome here, even when it's uncomfortable.
Radical transparency doesn't mean being rude. It means being precise. It means caring enough about the mission to tell the truth early.
Because if we can't face the facts, we can't grow.
And if someone consistently cannot deliver clean, timely information, even after coaching, then you have a bigger conversation to have and you can base that in standards, not frustration.
It’s important to remember that the cost of poor information flow compounds.
It’s missed opportunities, delayed pivots and unnecessary firefighting.
That's expensive in ways that rarely show up cleanly on a dashboard. But every CEO who has lived through a crisis that could have been caught earlier knows exactly what I'm talking about.
What it looks like when it works
When your team consistently sticks the landing, something changes in the room.
There's a different quality to the conversation.
Less hedging. Less preamble. Less time spent establishing context before anyone gets to the point.
People arrive prepared.
They've done the thinking before they walk in the door.
And because they've done the thinking, they've also developed a view which means you're no longer the only one with a perspective in the room.
That's when teams start to feel less like a reporting structure and more like a leadership group.
It also changes what gets noticed and rewarded.
When someone brings you a difficult situation early with clean signal, clear implication, a considered recommendation, that's a moment worth celebrating with the kind of specific acknowledgement that tells the rest of the room what good looks like.
The reverse is also true.
When something arrives late, emotionally loaded or without any recommendation attached, that's worth naming as a coaching moment.
You can use language like this, ‘Help me understand, at what point did we know this? What would it have looked like to bring it a week earlier?’
You're not blaming. You're building the instinct.
And over time, people begin to internalise the standard.
Your team will start asking themselves, before they bring anything to you: Do I have the signal, the implication, and the recommendation? Is this decision-ready?
They self-edit, prepare and the quality of what reaches you rises because they've done more of the work before it gets to you.
That's the compound effect of a high-clarity culture. It doesn't just make your job easier. It grows your people.
It’s up and out as well
Sticking the landing isn't just about what flows up to you.
It's also about what you model downward.
How you communicate with your board, your investors and your partners becomes the template. If you waffle, they waffle. If you're precise, they learn precision.
Leadership is rhythmic. The tempo you set becomes the organisational heartbeat.
So it's worth asking yourself: Are you bringing decision-ready clarity in every direction or have you adapted to the noise because it's been there long enough to feel normal?
Putting this into practice this quarter
Start by auditing your last five major decisions.
Ask yourself where clarity broke down. Were you working with the right information at the right time?
Observe how updates are currently delivered. Are they narrative-heavy? Data-light? Emotion-first? Recommendation-free?
Then reset the standard publicly.
In your next leadership meeting, you might say: ‘Going forward, when we surface something important, let's bring it decision-ready. Signal. Implication. Recommendation. That will help me move faster and it will help us grow.’
Notice the language. It’s an invitation.
And then watch for the first person who does it well. Name it. Reward it. Make it visible.
Remember, culture changes through the moments leaders choose to notice.
The bottom line
Your job as CEO is not to know everything.
It's to create the conditions where the right things are known early.
When your team consistently sticks the landing, when they bring you clean signal, thoughtful implication, and grounded recommendation, you recapture time, confidence and conviction.
That’s priceless.
You steer your business more effectively.
You fight the right fires.
You jump on the right opportunities.
Growth stops feeling chaotic and starts feeling intentional.
And your people grow too. Because the standard you set doesn't just make you better informed. It makes them better leaders.
So tell me, when you think about your own team, who consistently sticks the landing? And who's still wobbling on the mat?
Send me an email and let me know. I read every one and thanks for reading, I appreciate you being here.
PS - Episode 170 (below) dives into this topic in more detail
From The Partnership Playbook Podcast
Here are this week’s podcast episodes for your walk, commute or workout.
LEADERSHIP MOMENTS
EP 170 - 11 min: How CEOs train their teams to get you the right information at the right time. Are you absolutely certain you’re getting the truth from your team at the exact moment you need it most? In this episode, I break down how CEOs can build radical transparency without creating fear and how to train teams to “stick the landing” by delivering the right data, insight, and implications when it matters most. Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
EP 169 - 12 min: How to manage a GTM strategy that’s stalled (and start winning in 60 days).
What do you do when the GTM strategy that built your growth suddenly becomes the thing slowing it down? In this episode you’ll learn how to: evaluate alternative GTM paths without emotional bias or internal chaos and make a decisive strategy call using a structured scoring model. Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
CEO INTERVIEW
EP 150 - 48 min: CEO David Johnson. Many leaders confuse volume for value and "partner" for "vendor." But as David Johnson, CEO of Vervent, explains how real partnership is a strategic lever for growth and resilience, not just a nice-to-have, especially in high consequence markets. Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
When you're ready, there are three ways I can help you:
1. CEO Coaching: For CEO’s who want to lead with clarity and grow their business without sacrificing what matters most. A tailored 12-session experience with three interconnected elements: scaling you as a leader, elevating how you lead others, and creating conditions for sustainable business growth.
2. The Partnership Lab: A 6-week experience for founders, CEOs, and GTM leaders who are done with slow growth and stalled conversations. Learn to rapidly qualify and prioritise high-value partners, Install a system that turns conversations into contracts and capture outsized returns from partnerships that scale. Apply to join the next cohort today!
3. Leadership Events: From Cochlear and Lifeblood to military leaders, I have shared inspiring stories and practical frameworks and insights that shift how leaders leverage partnerships for growth. Book me to speak at your next conference, offsite, or leadership event.
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