You don’t need a perfect plan. You need a system that lets you adjust.
You're in 14A, watching another founder interview where someone “figured it out” in six months and made $2 million, drinking a soda water, tapping away on your laptop like the trajectory of the plane is set in stone. Everything feels smooth, stable, and under control. (At least as far as your air travel is concerned.)
Predictable enough to fire off a few Voxer and Slack messages before takeoff.
But what you don’t see is that your flight path is constantly being re-written in the air—and you’re blissfully unaware.
The only times a plane is truly on its original flight path are takeoff and landing. Everything in between is a choreography of micro-adjustments. Pilots reroute around storms, tweak altitude for turbulence, adjust speed for fuel efficiency, and stay in constant communication with air traffic control.
A one-degree shift in direction might not feel like much—but fly that way for long enough, and you’ll be miles off course. Literally. For every 60 miles you travel, a single degree off puts you about a mile off target. On a 600-mile flight, you’re landing ten miles from where you meant to.
But unless your laptop and soda water have an unfortunate meet-cute during turbulence, you’d never know it. Because to you, it all feels smooth. Predictable. And you land where you were supposed to—hopefully on time. Like the path was locked in from the start.
We want our clients to be like passengers—relaxed, confident, and unaware of the complexities being managed behind the scenes. Our team operates like the cabin crew: informed, prepared, and focused on delivering a seamless experience. Leading the way, our leadership team functions as the cockpit crew—making strategic decisions, navigating challenges, and maintaining constant communication with our version of air traffic control: the executive oversight that ensures we're aligned with our broader mission and objectives.
(You’re still with me on this metaphor, right?)
This level of trust and communication is challenging to build—especially when you’re a founder trying to chart a course you’ve never actually flown before. You want to believe there’s a perfect flight plan that makes everything feel final, figured out, clean. But in reality you’re adjusting every five minutes, responding to feedback, and revising structure while it’s in motion. Trying to navigate through the fog while also reassuring your team the wings are still attached and the plan is still intact.
And that’s not dysfunction, that’s the job.
It’s why I get legitimately excited when founders say things like:
“My team’s having trouble hitting deadlines.”
“I feel like I’m still the one driving everything.”
“How do I keep the momentum up when I’m not even sure how we’re going to get there?”
I get it. For real. I’ve been there.
And I learned that clarity isn’t something you wait for. It’s something you build in motion.
You don’t have to know everything to lead, but you do need a system that lets you navigate uncertainty with precision.
Otherwise you’re flying blind.
A couple months ago, a critical failure occurred in the air traffic control system managing Newark Liberty International Airport. I’m sure you heard about it. A fire, sparked by a fried piece of copper wiring at the Philadelphia-based control facility overseeing Newark's airspace, led to a 90-second radar and communications blackout. Planes were grounded, delayed, and rerouted—a total breakdown in precision because the infrastructure hadn't kept pace with the complexity it was meant to support.
And as bananas as it sounds—copper wiring running air traffic control in 2025—this is exactly how so many companies are still operating.
They’ve scaled the vision, the revenue, and the visibility—but their systems are patched together with copper wire and a prayer.
The team acts like human radar—trying to track what’s coming before it hits.
The founder’s inbox has become the cockpit.
Slack is the tower.
And everyone is wondering why everyone else is confused, fried, and begging for context that doesn’t exist yet.
We keep trying to fly precision-level businesses on operational systems that were built for speed, not sustainability. Scrappiness, not scale. That’s how we end up with close calls and near-misses:
Delayed launches
Withheld feedback
Team attrition
Misfires in client delivery
Emotional breakdowns that look like “performance issues”
It’s not about your mindset. Or the mindset of your team. (And, to be clear, I am a big fan of mindset work… and… mindset can only go so far.)
The issue is structural. And the research backs it.
Let’s start with the obvious: we’re building inside a VUCA world.
VUCA—short for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous—was originally coined by the U.S. Army War College to describe the unpredictability of post–Cold War conflict. But today, it’s just as relevant to business leaders trying to scale teams, navigate tech shifts, and operate with integrity in systems not built for any of us. (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014)
In a VUCA environment, there is no perfect information. There’s no final form. The ground is shifting—by design. So trying to lead like you're flying a fixed flight plan isn’t leadership—it’s wishful thinking.
You don’t need a perfect plan. You need a system that lets you adjust.
One study in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that when leaders openly acknowledge uncertainty—rather than fake confidence—they’re seen as more competent, not less. Transparency doesn’t erode trust. It builds it. Especially in high-stakes environments where certainty is a myth, but coordination is critical. (van der Bles et al., 2019)
And McKinsey tells the same story, just with different packaging. Their research on resilience shows that organizations who thrive in the face of disruption don’t just react quickly—they design for volatility. They prioritize flexibility, real-time data, and clear communication loops over rigid plans and top-down control. (McKinsey, 2021)
Then there’s the model of High Reliability Organizations (HROs)—like air traffic control systems, ER teams, nuclear facilities, etc. These orgs operate in environments where failure is always an option—and the cost is high. But they don’t avoid failure by demanding perfection. They avoid it by designing around uncertainty. They decentralize decisions. They drill for complexity. And they communicate constantly. (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007)
Rather than panic, they train for precision—no matter what.
So no, you’re not broken because you’re building in real time. You’re only at risk if you’re pretending you’re not.
The danger isn’t uncertainty.
The danger is pretending it’s not there.
Your team doesn’t need you to have every answer.
But they do need to trust that when the storm hits—or the copper wire catches fire—your systems won’t combust. That there’s enough structure, communication, and trust to adjust the route without losing altitude.
The founder myth says you should know.
But the truth is you can’t.
Most of us were sold a version of leadership where knowing equals authority. Where clarity is a prerequisite for movement. Where ambiguity is a weakness to overcome—not a reality to design for.
But knowing everything isn’t leadership.
And waiting for perfect clarity before you act is just another form of control.
The real work is building operational systems that can hold the ambiguity—so you don’t have to carry it all in your brain, your nervous system, or your group chat.
We don’t just need intuition.
We need air traffic control that actually works.
Because otherwise, those “near misses” you’re blaming on miscommunication, your team, your setup, Mercury Regretrograde, or bad luck?
They’re signals. Symptoms of a deeper misalignment between your ambition and your infrastructure.
So if things feel foggy right now…don’t panic. (And don’t freeze.)
You don’t need to know everything. You just need to ask better questions:
What systems need to evolve to support what I’m building now—not what I built a year ago?
Where am I expecting clarity, when what I really need is communication?
What am I assuming my team should know—without actually confirming they do?
This is what it means to lead in the unknown.
To stop waiting for the perfect map—and start flying the route, in dialogue, in feedback, in partnership.
You don’t have to pretend you’ve got it all figured out.
You just need a cockpit—and a tower—that can handle the truth.
In Episode 7 of COO-fessions: Rethinking leadership, power, and alignment in the age of collapse, I sat down with Sarah Paikai—fractional COO, systems thinker, and one of the most grounded strategic operators I know.
We talked about what it really means to build in real time. The friction of holding a big vision while your systems are still catching up. The challenge of moving fast while honoring complexity. And the truth that building something aligned doesn’t always feel clear—it means you’re building systems that help you get clearer as you go.
If you’ve been holding it all, waiting to feel “ready,” or hoping clarity will just arrive… This one’s for you.
🎧 Episode 7: “We’re Building in Real Time. Stop Waiting for Clarity.
Listen in for a conversation about leading through uncertainty—with systems that can hold the weight.
This is for the founder holding the big vision—and ready to stop white-knuckling it alone.
xo,
Brittany
P.S. If your business is growing—but you’re holding more and more with less and less support—this is your sign to stop normalizing the overwhelm.
Sarah (co-founder of Co-Op) and I are hosting a two-and-a-half-hour strategic session for founders who are scaling faster than their systems… and feeling it in their bodies, their bandwidth, and their bank accounts.
This isn’t “more to learn.”
It’s time to think differently about how you lead—and what your business is built to hold.
We’re sharing the exact approach we use to help founders reclaim clarity, team capacity, and time. And we’re giving you the tool we’ve used behind the scenes to help recover over $325K in silent loss.
You don’t need more hustle.
You need infrastructure that actually fits what you’re building.
It will be intimate. There will be discussion, not just listening and taking notes. There will be learning, not with us on a pedestal of perfection, but with us sharing what we have learned from leading from the messy middle and in the growth squeeze that occurs when your revenue outpaces your systems.
Join us for “What Got You Here Won’t Get You Free” on Wednesday, July 9th at 1 pm ET.
