Hey Reader,

You’re building a product.

• The sponsor wants it to be a flagship feature that showcases your company’s innovation.
• The operations team wants it to be lightweight and easy to maintain.
• The end users want it to solve a specific pain point they’re experiencing.

These aren’t necessarily contradictory.

But in the meeting where you’re trying to align on priorities, they sound contradictory.

Because everyone leads with what matters to them.

And nobody’s willing to say: “Actually, my priority is less important than theirs.”

So you leave the meeting with the impression that you need to do all three things.

And you start building in multiple directions at once.

The Pattern

Sign #3 is: You’re Getting Contradictory Direction From Different Stakeholders.

And it’s demoralising because it looks like you’re moving.

Your team is working.

But you’re changing direction every week.

• This week you’re prioritising the innovation angle because the sponsor emphasised it.
• Next week you’re pivoting to technical simplicity because ops raised concerns.
• The week after, you’re adjusting because end users are frustrated that their pain point isn’t being addressed.

You’re moving. But you’re not making progress.

Because progress requires a clear direction.

And you don’t have one.

Why This Happens

Contradictory direction rarely comes from people being difficult.

It usually comes from a few structural things:

1. Nobody has actually aligned on what success looks like.

Everyone has a different definition.

• The sponsor thinks success is: “Launches on time, showcases innovation.”
• Ops thinks success is: “Launches on time, maintainable, doesn’t overload our systems.”
• End users think success is: “Solves our pain point, even if it takes longer.”

These aren’t on the same page.

2. There’s misalignment on what problem you’re actually solving.

Are you building a flagship feature? A reliable tool? A pain-killer?

These require different approaches.

But nobody’s said explicitly: “This is what we’re solving for. Everything else is secondary.”

3. Real constraints haven’t surfaced.

• Maybe ops can’t support the innovation angle without major infrastructure work.
• Maybe the timeline doesn’t allow for both flagship-level quality and technical simplicity.
• Maybe the budget only covers one of the three priorities.

But these constraints are hidden.

So people keep advocating for their vision without understanding what’s actually feasible.

The Cost

Contradictory direction creates:

1. Rework - You build something. Feedback comes back. You rebuild. Repeat.
2. Confusion - Your team doesn’t know what they’re actually building for. Morale drops.
3. Delay - Every time the direction changes, you lose momentum.
4. Cost overruns - Rework is the enemy of budget.
5. Eroding trust - Stakeholders feel like the team isn’t executing.

The team feels like stakeholders don’t know what they want.

How To Spot It Early

Week 2-3: You start getting feedback from different stakeholders.

Notice: Is it aligned, or are there conflicting priorities?

If different people are emphasising different things, that’s signal #1.

Week 4-5:

You’re making decisions based on feedback.

Notice: Do the decisions feel consistent, or are you changing course?

If you’re second-guessing direction based on who you talked to last, that’s signal #2.

By Week 6:

You can see the rework starting.

Notice: Are you building things twice? Are conversations going in circles?

If yes, you have a direction problem.

What To Do About It

Step 1: Stop and name it.

Don’t wait until the rework is extensive.

Name the contradiction clearly.

“I’m hearing different priorities from different stakeholders. Before we go further, we need to align on what we’re actually optimising for.”

Step 2: Get the stakeholders in one room.

Not to vote. Not to convince each other.

To surface what each person cares about and why.

Ask each stakeholder: “What does success look like for you in this project?”

Have them answer in their own words. Then look at the answers.

Step 3: Find the real trade-offs.

Usually, contradictory priorities aren’t about different visions.

They’re about trade-offs.

“If we optimise for innovation, we may sacrifice simplicity.” “If we optimise for speed, we may reduce robustness.” “If we optimise for end-user experience, we may increase maintenance burden.”

Name the trade-offs explicitly.

Step 4: Decide as a group.

Ask directly: “If we can only optimise for one of these three things, which one wins?”

This is uncomfortable. People don’t like being forced to choose. But it’s necessary.

Often, when forced to choose, priorities become clear.

The sponsor might say: “End-user satisfaction is non-negotiable. Innovation and simplicity are nice-to-haves.”

Ops might say: “Maintainability is non-negotiable. Everything else we can work with.”

Once you have a hierarchy of priorities, you have a direction.

Step 5: Document the decision.

Write it down. “We have agreed: Priority 1 is solving end-user pain. Priority 2 is scalability. Priority 3 is innovation.”

Share this with everyone.

Refer back to it when new feedback comes in.

I worked on a platform rebuild once.

• The executive leadership wanted to modernise the tech stack and position us as a forward-thinking company.
• The operations team wanted stability and minimal disruption to existing systems.
• The customers wanted more features and faster load times.

In early conversations, all three priorities felt equally important.

So we tried to do all three: rebuild the tech stack, maintain stability, and add features.

By week 8, we were drowning.

We called a decision-making meeting.

I said: “We can’t do all three equally well. If we prioritise the rebuild, we go slower on features. If we prioritise features, the rebuild gets delayed. If we prioritise stability, we can’t take big risks on the new stack.”

We went through each option.

Finally, the CTO said: “Stability first. We can afford a slower feature rollout. But we can’t afford system failures.”

That decision changed everything.

Suddenly, the team had a clear direction.

Did everyone get everything they wanted? No.

But everyone got clarity. And clarity is worth more than compromise.

Contradictory direction is expensive and demoralising. But it’s also fixable.

The fix is uncomfortable because it requires saying no to some things. But once you’ve said no clearly, you can say yes confidently to what remains.

And that’s when projects start moving again.

This Week If you took the assessment and Sign #3 showed up on your project, do this:

Call a meeting with your key stakeholders.

Ask each of them: “What does success look like for you?”

Write down the answers.

Share them back to the group.

Then ask: “If we can only optimise for one, which one?”

You don’t have to decide in that meeting.

But you have to have the conversation.

Clarity comes from naming what’s actually being asked of you.

Praying you have a blessed week.

Yom

P.S. - Contradictory direction is never the team’s fault. It’s a leadership clarity problem. And it’s a solvable one, but only if you name it.

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