Failure, Perspective, and Avoiding Downward Spirals (8-12-26)

Last week was about harvesting failure. This week is about failure, perspective, and avoiding downward spirals.

I remember that I had someone I was mentoring reach out to me about a colossal failure they had. They needed help. We sat down and they started talking about how huge of a mistake this was and how big of a deal it was. I asked them what happened. They explained the situation, beating themselves up for doing something so stupid.

When they stopped talking, I asked them what else happened. They stared at me confused. At this point I said something like, “You said it was a colossal failure. I’m waiting for the colossal part. What happened next?” Then, they told me that was all they had to share. At that point I looked at them and said, “Oh! You are really beating yourself up. You’re right, you missed on that one. You whiffed. That’s not a colossal failure though. Everyone has done that. I’ve done something like that a few times. In fact, if you don’t get your butt kicked once or twice a year you aren’t pushing hard enough.” We chuckled, and the outside perspective made them see things differently.

Let’s connect some dots. Does the situation above sound familiar? I’m guessing most of us have been in both roles. We’ve been the mentee, spiraling hard after a simple mistake. We’ve also been the outside observer, realizing that in the grand scheme of things this isn’t such a big deal. We talk a lot about embracing failure and moving on. One important part of this is putting failure into context. In the grand scheme of things, most of our mistakes and failures will be small stumbling blocks that we can later build with. Let’s treat them that way, as opposed to viewing them as colossal mistakes we will never recover from.

The challenge: How will you keep failure in perspective and avoid downward spirals?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Harvesting Failure (8-5-26)

Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about failures and premortems. This week is about harvesting failure.

Pretend for a minute that you are a farmer. Pretend that you were supposed to plant a field full of corn. The crops start growing you and notice something interesting. You have a lot of corn, but you also have potatoes. You weren’t trying to grow potatoes. They just showed up.

At this point, you’ve failed to plant a field full of corn. With that said, when it’s harvest time what will you do? Will you only harvest the corn, leaving the potatoes to rot and fall apart? Will you harvest the potatoes too and see what you can do with them? Will you spend time analyzing the soil to see what happened?

What does this have to do with failure? This week’s analogy is all about learning from and making the most of what happened. I would hope that even though you didn’t plant the potatoes, you’d still harvest them and do something with them. I hope you would spend time analyzing the soil to see what happened.

We talk all the time about being okay with failure. We say how we should fail forward and that we should celebrate failure. What we don’t spend enough time thinking about is how we should harvest failure. Rather than failing and trying to forget it, what learnings can we bring forward with us? I’m not happy that I failed in various points in my career, but I am thankful for what I’ve taken from that to make me better.

The challenge: What will you harvest from failure?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Failure and Premortems (7-29-26)

This week I want to kick off a new series focused on failure, and we will start by thinking about why we will fail and premortems.

I have a lot on my plate. (Does that sound familiar?) In order to try to manage this, I keep a Word document with all my key workstreams and anything that requires a significant part of my time. I then prioritize those workstreams and update them on a regular basis.

This week I took an additional step. I fed my priority sheet to Claude, and asked it to deliver the top 10 reasons why I would fail delivering these things based on what Claude knew about my workload and me. It pulled out some great reasons why I might fail including things like, “I will become the connection point and bottleneck for too many things simultaneously.” “The important non-urgent thinking tasks will be put in the background to deal with urgent feeling fires.” “You don’t protect enough unstructured thinking time.” From there, I asked it to give me 3 tangible things I could action on to prevent this and did those.

Let’s make some connections. Most of the time, when we analyze failure, we analyze it once it has already happened. This is useful, however, it’s too late. Instead of doing a postmortem, I did a premortem. I realized I was overwhelmed and the chances of failure were higher than usual. Instead of letting this happen, I attacked it. I asked what would cause me to fail. I defined the problem and then started acting on it. I can’t guarantee this will eliminate failure, but I can say it will increase my chances of success.

The challenge: Will you conduct premortems to identify failure points before they happen?

Bonus- This is the grid I fill out with my workstreams. It’s been pretty helpful.

Workstream	Biz Impact (H,M,L)	Deliverable Grade	Effort Needed (H, M, L)	Priority (A, B, C)	Notes
Insert project/workstream	What is the business impact?	What “grade” does this have to be?	How much effort do you need to put in?	What is the final priority	Insert any relevant notes to explain what this workstream is about and why it might be high priority or why it might take a certain amount of effort

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Taking Time to Soak It All In (7-20-26)

This is a bonus blog about taking time to soak in where you are and what you’ve done.

Last Friday, my boss sent me some recognition about something I recently delivered. Within a few seconds I had read the email, thought “that’s nice”, sent a quick reply, filed it away into a folder where I keep the recognition I get, and started to move to the next thing. The email was already sorted into the folder when I paused for a second. I decided to stop rushing to the next thing. I sat there for a moment and let myself absorb what I had delivered, the feedback, and the recognition I had received. I allowed myself to feel proud and accomplished. I slowed down and spent a few seconds taking it all in and felt all the better for it. Then, and only then, did I move to the next task.

Let’s connect dots. Has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you ever been so lost in the grind that you just keep moving from thing to thing? Are you ever so lost in the grind that you don’t let the achievement and recognition sink in?

If this has happened to you before, I’m sure you can also attest to how exhausting and mentally draining this is. It’s so easy to get lost in all of this. Sometimes, we just need to slow down. Sometimes, we need to take a deep breath, look around, and be proud of where we are and how we got here.

The challenge: Will you take a moment to soak in what you’ve achieved and what you’ve done?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Enabling Trade-offs (7-15-26)

Last week was about making trade-offs in order to avoid burnout. This week is about enabling trade-offs.

The other day my boss did something that was very simple and very effective. I was on an email chain with my boss and someone else. My boss wrote something along the lines of, “You should connect with Andrew on this. Andrew will be wrapped up this week and next week on X.” It was a simple two sentences. It drove home that this was important. It also gave me air cover that he didn’t expect me to move on it right away. He was enabling me to make a trade-off to focus on X, and get to this at a later date. It was a simple two sentences that were powerful and appreciated. Have you ever had a leader give you air cover? How did it feel?

Let’s connect the dots. How often do you hear leaders talk about how we need to make trade-off decisions? I feel this is a constant talking point at most townhalls. Now, how often do leaders enable you to actually make trade-off decisions? How often do they proactively give you the air cover to not do all the things all the time at the same time? This is where things tend to fall apart. It’s easy to say the right things, and much harder to do the right things.

Something I’m trying to do a better job of is ensuring there is more comfort, clarity, and alignment around what can move slow in comparison. The conversation usually goes like this, “The top priorities are A, B, and C. I see you are also trying to move X, Y, and Z. If X, Y, and Z ever threaten A, B, and C, then I want you to know I’m okay with X, Y, and Z moving slower. I’m comfortable with you pausing that work and making that trade-off, so we can nail A, B, and C.” You can have conversations like this if you are officially in a leadership position and even if you are an individual contributor partnering with cross-functional teams.

The challenges: How are you giving your people air cover to make trade-off decisions?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Trade Offs and Burn Out (7-7-26)

This week I want us to pause for a moment to think about the rest of the year, trade-offs, and burn out.

I was off last week, enjoying our summer shutdown. During this time, I made a few decisions about things that would be non-negotiable for the week. For example, I decided that I would get 7k-10k steps in every day. Nothing was going to get in the way of this. Maybe I would trade off sleeping in, so I could wake up and walk first thing. Maybe I’d trade off sitting on the coach relaxing for walking. I was intentional about my decision, and I was intentional about making trade-offs to reach that goal.

Then, work started up again. We are basically 1 week into the back half of the year. Over the past few days I’ve heard people say things like, “We’re already back to the races,” “Back on the treadmill,” “It’s already so busy.” Do you feel this way? I know I do. All of a sudden, achieving those goals became more complicated, because a lot more was on my plate.

Let’s connect some dots. In my time away, I was able and willing to do things for the house, my family, and myself. This filled my cup and made me a better human. As we start up the second half of the year, I can already see that there is more work than I’ll ever be able to do. If I try to do it all, I know I’ll burn myself out. When I burn myself out, I won’t be good for my family, myself, or my work colleagues.

I’m realizing that if I’m not intentional about my goals and the trade-offs I’m willing to make I won’t be successful. If I’m not intentional, I might spend too much time on X project and not enough on Y, when Y is what really counts. If I’m not intentional, I might trade-off my health or my time with my family for getting lost in the daily grind.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Pausing and Searching for Indicators of Progress (6-24-26)

This is week 5 of our series based on lessons I’ve learned working in a central role. This week is about pausing, looking around, and searching for indicators of progress.

Part of the challenge of being in a central role is that there often is not a clear scoreboard. When I worked in marketing for a brand, we had clear targets we were going after. We knew we were trying to help X number of patients and achieve Y level of market share. I don’t have that in this role. I’m trying to drive us to the future of market research. It’s hard to know how close or far away I am from an ambiguous target that is always changing.

Recently, I had a few days where I was a bit overwhelmed and irritated. I was getting swallowed up by various fire drills and other issues. In the frustration, I thought to myself, “Am I even doing anything? Am I even getting anywhere?” After being grumbly for a day or two, I snapped out of it, slowed down, and pulled my head up again. I still didn’t have a clear scoreboard. However, I could at least see indicators that I was at least moving things forward. I still can’t tell you exactly how close or far away we are from the future. I can see how far we’ve come. I can see how our momentum is taking us forward, and that’s fuel enough to keep going.

Let’s make some connections. Our story this week is about being overwhelmed, lost, and pausing to find perspective. Have you ever felt lost and discouraged in your role? Even if you’re in a role where there is some kind of scoreboard, I’m willing to bet there are moments where you have been so overwhelmed with things that you’ve felt a little lost. It’s easy to feel this way. Everything is going so fast. Technology is changing so much. There is so much pressure.

In moments like these, we have to find a way to slow down and pull up. We have to find a way to slow down, even if we think we should be sprinting. Once we slow down, we can look around, check out the indicators around us, and see how we are really doing vs the story we are telling ourselves.

The challenge: Will you slow down and look for indicators of progress?

Bonus- Many of you will be part of our annual shutdown. I hope you totally unplug. I hope you reconnect with friends, family, and yourself. I hope you stay safe and get some sun.

Have a jolly good day and a fun/safe 4^th of July,

Andrew Embry

Standing in the Tension (6-17-26)

This is week 4 of our series based on lessons I’ve learned working in a central role. This week is about being comfortable standing in the tension between different ideas.

I’ve mentioned before that in this role I have to navigate a lot of ambiguity without have any formal power. As a result of this, I often find myself in the center of competing forces. I’m being asked to scale enterprise solutions while moving fast. I’m challenged to help meet the needs of individuals while creating things that meet the needs of the masses. I’m asked to customize things to specific needs while keeping things scalable. I’m asked to experiment with new things while also standardizing. I’m asked to encourage exploration while maintaining a level of intentional design and control. I’m asked to imagine a future, build it, and drive adoption all at the same time (like building the airplane while flying and acting as air traffic control).

Let’s make some connections. Have you ever felt trapped in the middle of competing ideas? Maybe you’ve been asked to do more with less. Maybe you’ve been asked to embrace failure, while also being told you can’t miss. Standing in the middle of ideas is a lot. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the complexity. The instinct is to resolve the tension as quickly as possible, but the truth is that the tension will always be there. The second instinct is to avoid the tension if you can’t resolve it.

The beauty comes from standing in the middle of the tension and knowing it won’t break you. The power comes from realizing multiple ideas can be true at the same time, and leaning into that until you see solutions and possibilities that never existed before. Once you do that, you stop living in a black or white world. You stop living in a world of this or that. Instead, you begin living in a world of “Yes, and…” which is incredibly powerful.

The challenge- How will you embrace standing in the tension?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Leadership and Power (6-3-26)

Last week we kicked off a series based on reflections I’ve had from working in a central role. This week we will look at leadership and power.

In my previous role in the business, I was a HCP marketer on a brand team. I had explicit and formalized power in that role. I had a dedicated budget that I was responsible for. I had the ability to make decisions. In some ways, this made things easy, because if push came to shove, I could just make a call.

I don’t have formalized power in my current centralized role. I don’t really have a budget that’s truly mine. I’m working across business units and functions, and I have no explicit power or control. Let’s be real, no one actually has to listen to me. I can’t just make a call the way I could in my former job. Instead, I have to be more thoughtful and intentional about creating a compelling vision, building trust, bringing others along, and giving people reasons to actually want to come along on this journey.

Let’s make some connections. Think about your favorite leaders you’ve ever worked with. Think about the people you would be willing to follow. How many of them would you follow primarily because they have official power? I’m guessing that number is low. How many of them would you follow because they did things like care for you, had a vision, brought you along, etc. regardless of them having official power? I’m guessing that number is a lot higher. I’d also argue these people are the true leaders.

While having official power can be nice, it is easy for it to be a crutch or a cheat code. If we overuse it, then we risk people feeling like they aren’t heard or valued. Being forced to influence without authority is the true test of leadership. All of this has led to some reflection questions like, “What does my leadership look like? How can I lead in a way that will make others want to come along? Where do I need to lean on power vs influence?”

The challenge- Will you take the time to reflect on how you are leading?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Embracing a Broader View of Leadership and Support (5-27-26)

Recently, I had a conversation with someone who is working in a central function for the first time when they have spent the rest of their career “in the business”. This led me to reflecting on what I’ve learned from working in a central role. This week is about embracing a broader view of leadership and support.

Let’s start by talking a bit about what it means to be in a central role vs working in the business. If we oversimplify things, central roles are there to support and enable other roles to deliver for the business. If you work in the business, you generally are accountable for making the decisions that drive results and revenue. Another difference is that typically central roles are more focused on driving a capability and thus support a wider variety of stakeholders across business units. For example, in my role, I’m responsible for leading AI efforts across the entire market research function.

If I’m being honest, it’s sometimes hard to navigate this idea of leading efforts and supporting so many different groups of people. What exactly does leading look like in this space? My inner critic whispers, “Andrew, if you’re leading AI efforts and supporting these people then you should be able to lead from the front and be all things to all people.” The other day someone was sharing something awesome they were doing in the AI space, and I hadn’t really been involved in it. I was excited for them, and I felt guilty that I wasn’t doing enough for them at the same time. Ultimately, I shared the work with some other folks to spotlight how great it was and spotlight how we might be able to adopt this as best practices. However, my inner critic was like, “You should have been there to help shape that or you should have been more involved to provide value.”

Let’s make some connections. Even if you don’t currently work in a central role, I’m assuming you have an inner critic. I’m also assuming that your inner critic has probably whispered similar things to you. My inner critic still whispers. However, this role has done a great job of broadening my view of what leadership and support looks like.

I’m becoming more comfortable that I don’t have to be all things to all people, because I’ve expanded my beliefs on what leadership and support can mean. I’ve learned that leadership doesn’t always mean being out in the front. I’ve learned that being supportive doesn’t always mean being hands on. Sometimes, leadership and support are working behind the scenes to remove barriers. Sometimes, leadership and support are creating space, so other people can step into it and embrace their awesomeness. Sometimes, leadership and support are shining the light on others, so they are seen.

The challenge: How will you embrace a broader view of leadership and support?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry