The way most founders handle the uncertainty is by going silent until they have a perfect answer. But that creates a way bigger problem than imperfect communication ever would.

So what do you do when you need to lead with a vision that's still forming?

👉 Silence is not neutral. It is actively corrosive. 👈

The Endgame Exercise

In my earlier story, once Chris admitted he hadn't really figured out the vision fully, we played The Endgame Exercise.

The Endgame Exercise is when you sketch out different versions of the company's future.

This exercise is about getting the different versions out of your head and onto paper so we can actually look at them objectively.

Chris and I ended up with three very different Endgames:

The first was going deep in their domain expertise to become the industry leader.
The second was going both wide and deep in the general field to form a moat.
The third was going wide and deep, but across all fields.

With all of it laid out clearly, we figured out which Endgames would make whom happy, and which had the highest probability to succeed.

The beautiful thing about laying out the possibilities this way is that it takes the pressure off making a single, irrevocable decision.

You can see the options side by side.

You can weigh them against what you know about the market, your team, your fundraising narrative, and your own energy.

And crucially, you can see that in the near term, the day-to-day work is basically the same regardless of which Endgame you choose.

You just need to pick a direction for how you talk about it. And that's often the part that unlocks everything else.

Share the Frame, not the Final Answer

Even after Chris and I went through the Endgame Exercise and he had a clear view on which was most likely the best choice to take, he still needed to know how to share it with the team.

He said: "A lot of this is based on assumption, and I don't have the whole vision fully finished. How do I communicate this well with the team?"

I encouraged him to share a Frame, rather than a finished vision.

A Frame is NOT a mission statement. Instead, it's a way of helping people understand what you're optimizing for right now, even if the long-term picture is still evolving.

A frame sounds something like this:

"Here's what we know. Here's what we're betting on. Here's what we don't know yet, and here's how we're going to figure it out."

That level of honesty, when delivered with confidence, is actually more inspiring than a polished narrative that everyone suspects is performative.

People don't need you to be certain.

They need you to be thoughtful and directionally clear.

They can handle ambiguity. What they absolutely cannot handle is silence.

The best Frames are presented as a beautiful experiment, validating or negating a hypothesis you have. Your team is a team of mad scientists, making calculated bets, getting results, and fine-tuning the conclusion along the way.

Chris ended up going into his next team meeting and walking through all three Endgames with his senior leaders.

He didn't share them as final decisions, but put them out as possibilities. He told his team, "Here's how I'm thinking about this, and I want your input."

The response surprised him. It was overwhelmingly positive - not because the answer was clear, but because the process was transparent.

For the first time, Chris's team felt like they understood the thinking behind the decisions being made, and they felt trusted enough to be invited into the conversation.

Multiple people told him afterward that it was the best team meeting they'd had in months.

Do you know what that tells me? The bar for communication isn't perfection. Your team wants transparency into how you think more than anything else.

Getting your Founder Types to help you think

One of the most underrated leadership moves is letting your team participate in the vision-building process.

You don't have to do it in a way that's consensus-driven or indecisive, but you can signal: "I trust your judgment, and I want it to inform mine."

This method works particularly well with Founder Types on your team.

Every scaling company has a few Founder Types:

• They're the operators and senior ICs who think beyond their function.

• They take a holistic POV on the business.

• They're the ones asking sharp questions in all-hands meetings.

• They're the ones who want to understand the "why" behind product decisions, not just the "what."

(If you're reading this newsletter, you're probably a Founder Type yourself.)

When you invite Founder Types into the strategic conversation early, two things happen:

1. First, you get better inputs, because they're close to the customer and product, and they often see things you're too high-altitude to catch.

2. Second, you build deep alignment. Someone who helped shape the vision will fight for it in a way that someone who was handed a memo never will.

In other words, these are the type of workers you want the deepest alignment with, because they will be a fierce and loyal champion of the vision and future you are trying to build.

🤔 Would you rather have people fighting for a direction they helped build, or people doubting the direction behind your back because they were told to follow it?

That's the choice you're making every time you decide whether to share your thinking, or keep it to yourself.

The Mirror

When a founder tells me they need to "figure out the vision," what I usually hear underneath is: "I'm afraid of committing to a direction that might be wrong."

That's a completely rational fear. But the cost of not committing is almost always higher than the cost of committing to something slightly imperfect.

Markets move. Teams need direction. Investors need a narrative. And you, the person building this thing, need a thesis you can actually test rather than an abstract set of possibilities you can endlessly deliberate on.

Your vision doesn't have to be perfect. It has to be clear enough that people can rally around it, specific enough that it shapes decisions, and honest enough that you can update it when you learn more.

Want more operational content?

Check out Coaching Founder for downloadable Notion templates and write-ups on how to level up your execs, your teams, and yourself.

About Regina Gerbeaux

Shortly after her role as Chief of Staff, then COO, she opened her own coaching practice, Coaching Founder, and has worked with outrageously talented operators on teams like Delphi AI, dYdX, Astronomer, Fanatics Live, and many more companies backed by funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

Her open-sourced write-ups on Operational Excellence and how to run a scaling company can be found here and her templates can be found here.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner, daughter, and dog, and can be found frequenting 6:00AM Orangetheory classes or hiking trails nearby.