Hey!

Chris here. Welcome to Blueprint—the newsletter to help you build a winning engineering team.

One of my biggest leadership lessons came from an MIT continuing education course in 2011.

A professor told a story about a group of soldiers during World War II who got lost in the Alps. They were trapped in terrible conditions and growing increasingly worried about their survival.

Then one of the soldiers found a map in his pocket.

With renewed confidence, they used that map to navigate their way down to a local town where they found food, water, and a warm place to sleep.

But when they showed the map to a local shopkeeper, he looked at it and said, "This isn't even a map of this country."

The professor's lesson has stuck with me ever since: When your team is lost, any map will do.

With AI uncertainty at an all-time high, this lesson has become more critical than ever. I've seen it separate successful leaders from those who stalled waiting for definitive answers.

Here's why this is so important (and what it means for you). 👇️ 

📒 DEEP DIVE

The Cost of Waiting for Certainty

Why the best leaders act with imperfect information—and what happens when you don't.

The Myth of the Smartest Leader

We have this societal belief that great CEOs are the smartest people in the room. The idea is that if you're brilliant enough, you can think your way through anything.

But intelligence doesn't help when every option looks bad.

At the executive level, you don't get easy problems. Those have all been solved by the people below you. What reaches your desk are the impossible decisions where your options are "bad," "horrible," and "awful."

Naturally, you pick the lesser of three evils and go with "bad." Then comes the flood of people criticizing you for making a bad decision.

Yes, it was a bad decision. But it was also the right decision. These aren't mutually exclusive.

Being able to make these tough choices has nothing to do with intelligence.

It's having the confidence to act on a choice when there's no clear answer.

Steadiness Under Pressure

Instead of intelligence, what actually predicts whether a CEO will succeed is how well they handle stress.

In a storm, teams follow the person who chooses a path with calm confidence.

Going back to the wrong map story, the soldiers didn't need certainty. They needed direction. Someone had to say, "We're going this way," assuredly enough to get everyone to move with them.

Genuine leaders project that same steadiness. They're working with imperfect information, but they're able to make decisive movements regardless.

Your team doesn't need you to have all the answers. They need you to provide direction when nobody knows what's coming next.

Stop Waiting for Certainty

I see founders and engineers fall into this "Certainty Trap" constantly. They wait and wait for the right answer before they move.

But the certainty never arrives. And hesitation kills momentum and trust.

Every moment you spend searching for perfection is time your competitors are moving forward. For as much as action compounds, hesitation decays.

The soldiers could have stayed put, argued about which direction to go, and tried to figure out the perfect route—but they would have all died.

The wrong map got them moving, and that was enough to keep them alive.

There is no right decision. All you can do in any situation is make the best decision you can with the information you have now and then iterate from there.

The mental anguish and time spent deciding usually costs more than what you'd gain from finding a "better" choice.

What Builders Can Learn from CEOs

Real leadership is pointing the way when the path ahead remains unclear.

Those leaders can make the hard calls when all the options look bad.

So if you're an engineer, remember: precision matters, but progress matters more.

And founders: your job isn't to have every answer. Your job is to make decisions that drive progress.

Because the only way to clarity is through action.

BEFORE YOU GO…

You'll never have perfect information. It's a tough truth every leader has to come to terms with.

Take what you know, make the call, and move

Because the wrong map is better than no map at all.

So stop waiting for certainty and start leading with steadiness.

Talk soon,

Chris.