Hi Reader

In 1847, a Viennese physician named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered why women were dying in his maternity ward at a rate that should have been impossible to ignore.

The answer? Handwashing.

Specifically, the absence of it. Doctors were moving directly from performing autopsies to delivering babies and the data Semmelweis gathered was unambiguous; wards where handwashing was introduced saw mortality rates drop from ten percent to near zero.

He had the answer & the evidence. He presented both.

His colleagues weren't persuaded. Hard to reconcile now that it wasn't the data they had a problem with, but what the data required of them. Accepting it meant accepting that their own hands had been killing their patients.

That's a different kind of knowing entirely. The kind your brain will work very hard to route around.

Semmelweis died in an asylum in 1865, still unvindicated. The medical establishment adopted handwashing seventeen years later.

I've been doing this long enough now to know when a business founder already has the answer.

You can tell within twenty minutes. They describe the commercial change required with a clarity that would embarrass most consultants. New pricing model laid out on a spreadsheet or in Tableau. They name the partners they should be chasing instead of the ones they're comfortable with. They rationalise why the current sales motion is burning cash and killing velocity. All explained with the kind of precision that only comes from someone who's been sitting with the truth for a while.

And then you wait for what comes next.

Maybe new meetings booked. Or different conversations and approaches. Something different happening at meetings.

But no, it doesn't come.

What comes instead are reasons. “Ah, the timing isn't right.”, “The team isn't ready.” “The next product development will make the conversation easier.” “The investors would be nervous about a pricing change.” Or my favourite “Sports is relationship-driven so you have to be patient.”

Good reasons, all of them, in the sense of sounding plausible & Responsible. And in my experience, almost never the real ones.

The real reasons tend to live somewhere deep within.

The first one is identity. In sports tech especially, the founder usually is the product i.e. a former athlete or obsessive engineer who saw a flaw in how the sports-tech game was being played out and built something around that vision. Changing the commercial model, shifting from build-it-and-they'll-come to ruthless outbound, or ditching beloved features that don't move the needle doesn't feel like a strategic decision.

It feels like a public admission that the original genius wasn't enough.

And so the founder steps out of the visionary seat and into something more exposed. The person who gets told no thirty times a week. Intellectually, they agree the change is necessary. Emotionally, however, it registers as self-betrayal. Examine that and you’ll see the distance is more painful than most people acknowledge.

The second reason is subtler and in some ways more insidious i.e. the commercial change requires giving up control in the one area where they still feel like the smartest person in the room.

Delegating sales ownership to someone who'll run it differently. Changing price or packaging and risking customer upset. Walking away from the comfortable stealth zone into customer ‘buying committees’ where outsiders judge their baby in real time and don't particularly care about its origin story. The status quo, even when it's slowly suffocating the business, still gives the illusion of control. And most founders, if I'm honest about what I've watched, would rather slowly run out of runway than feel that specific kind of exposure.

They'd rather look good and lose than look bad and win.

What makes this really hard to address is how elegant the defence mechanism is.

There's an intellectual bypass at work. That is, the founder achieves perfect clarity, can articulate the change with conviction, and that articulation creates a feeling of progress without any actual movement or risk. Describing the solution keeps them in the safe, respected strategist seat. Doing it would make them the salesperson who might fail in public.

And so the company's commercial potential bleeds away quietly in the background while the founder stays psychologically intact and the original identity remains untouched.

The question I eventually have to put to them, and it's never the first or second conversation, it tends to be later, when the trust is there, goes something like this.

“...You don't have a strategy problem anymore. You have an identity & control problem. And until you decide which one you're more willing to lose - the company, or the version of yourself that built it - you're going to keep describing the solution with perfect clarity and doing absolutely fu&k all about it.”

And, after some soul-searching, that's when the real work starts.

Not sales training or a new go-to-market deck.

Are they willing to become the kind of founder who actually does it?

Another Newsletter you might find useful....

See What Others Miss. Lead Where Others Won't. Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel | Leadership Speaker & Strategist | Creator of Master the Unseen™ DeDe Halfhill is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, keynote speaker, and leadership strategist who helps leaders Master the Unseen™—the hidden forces shaping their teams, decisions, and cultures. With 25+ years of high-stakes leadership experience, including two combat tours in Iraq and advisory roles to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, she understands what it takes to lead when uncertainty is high, stakes are real, and trust is non-negotiable. DeDe equips leaders with the tools to recognize hidden leadership dynamics, step into hard moments, and sustain real impact. Because leadership isn’t just about strategy—it’s about recognizing what’s shaping the moment before it happens and having the courage to act on it. She has spoken to executives across industries, from Fortune 500 companies to military leaders, helping them see what others miss, lead with clarity in high-stakes moments, and build lasting leadership cultures rooted in trust and accountability. Her work challenges conventional leadership wisdom, proving that the biggest threats to success aren’t always external—they’re often the unseen undercurrents, blind spots, and emotional forces leaders fail to address. 👉 Learn more at dedehalfhill.com Subscribe​

Thank you for being part of this community. The work on how to lead better is something you have to do alone. But you don't have to do it on your own. Onward and Upward, Paul Clarke https://www.paulclarke.ie Connect with me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulclarkeperform/​

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