The middle of any initiative is like a road trip without windows.
Your team can't see the landmarks.
They can't gauge progress.
They don't know how much further they have to go.
Without that visibility, time warps. Impatience builds. Even capable people start questioning whether they're on the right path—or if there's a path at all.
As their leader, you are their windows.
What This Actually Means
Your job isn't just to report facts or manage expectations. You're the narrator of this journey.
You call out the landmarks: "Remember three months ago when we couldn't even get a meeting with that client? Now they're asking us to expand the project."
You remind them of terrain already covered: "We've solved the technology piece, built the team, and proven the concept works. That's not small progress—that's foundation work most teams never complete."
You prepare them for what's ahead: "The next month will feel slow because we're building systems. But once these are in place, everything accelerates."
The Connection to IDA
This is why the IDA framework works so well in the messy middle. When your team can't see the full picture, you help them focus on what they can control:
- Information: What do we need to understand next?
- Decisions: What choices can we make with what we know?
- Action: What's the very next step we can take?
You're not just managing tasks. You're providing perspective that transforms confusion into clarity, one step at a time.
The Real Impact
Teams don't need perfect plans to keep moving. They need to know where they are and what progress looks like.
That's your job as a leader: to make the invisible visible. To turn the blurry, mundane landscape of the middle into a story worth continuing.
Because the difference between teams that push through and teams that give up often comes down to this: whether they have a leader who can help them see the journey clearly, even when the destination isn't yet in sight.