Where a problem goes to be ignored

Two moments from my Full Picture Leadership conversation with Collin Earnst

He killed a rollout he'd spent months pushing

It was a project management system Collin Earnst's marketing team had spent real money on. Half the team took to it right away. The other half never did. They worked differently, and the new way of operating didn't fit how they were wired.

He ran at it for months anyway. He had the mandate, the budget, and the relationships.

Then he stood in front of the group and said: I made the wrong decision. We're going back.

What he said next is the part I keep thinking about...

"You can't just will it to happen based on your sheer leadership charisma and experience. It doesn't work."

He'd already tried the hard version and the more inspiring version. The org wasn't ready, and readiness isn't something a leader can substitute for.

Leaders I work with tend to have a timeline problem. They assume that if the direction is right and they push hard enough, the organization will move at the speed they set.

Sometimes it won't. And the useful move is to go find out why, before you spend another two quarters on it.

Most leaders find the friction eventually. The expensive part is how long they spend not looking.

In the clip, Collin says what looking actually sounds like.

You call it healthy tension

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's where a problem goes to be ignored.

Sales and Marketing. Product and Customer Success. Whichever two teams in your building have been circling each other for a year. Everyone agrees the friction is normal, and some of it is genuinely productive.

Collin named the trap in it.

"Where it can become problematic is when we use healthy tension as a way to explain away some dysfunction that could be addressed."

In his case, the sales org had grown to a few dozen reps who wanted autonomy in their own regions. Marketing wanted message consistency, brand integrity, and a workflow that wasn't a series of one-off features. Both positions were reasonable. The label everyone reached for was healthy tension.

So he sat down with the regional managers and asked three questions.

1. What are your priorities?

2. What's most important to you?

3. What are you not getting currently?

Then he went back to his own team. He told them the necessary adaptation sat with the marketing team. Simply expecting the change to occur on the sales team wasn't the answer.

That meant shorter runways. More flexibility. Templates instead of custom builds. Yes, a loss of control over consistency.

I don't see this bold move often. The initiative for change started with his own team. He asked them to lead by example.

He went looking for what the label was covering. He then owned the outcome.

Healthy tension is real. It's also the most comfortable label available for a problem nobody wants to open.

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This is part of my Full Picture Leadership series, where I talk with experienced leaders about what really happens in high-stakes moments, so you can recognize them faster in your own work. You can connect with Collin Earnst and me, Rachel Wexler, on LinkedIn.