When facing ambiguity, the best strategy is not to wait for perfect information but to engage in "sense-making." This involves taking small, strategic actions, gathering data from them, and progressively building an understanding of the situation, rather than being paralyzed by analysis.

A successful team launch requires three distinct actions: 1) establishing a vivid, imaginable goal (like JFK's "man on the moon"), 2) setting explicit norms for communication channels and response times, and 3) clarifying each member's individual responsibilities before the next meeting.

A manager complained about vague direction from superiors, yet he failed to commit to a clear path for his own team. This replicates the exact behavior he dislikes. A leader's failure to make a decision—even a temporary one—cascades ambiguity down the organization.

Contrary to keeping targets private to avoid failure, entrepreneur Mark Laurie advocates for announcing huge goals publicly. This act forces the team to reverse-engineer a plan, aligns stakeholders on the ultimate prize, and increases the probability of achievement—making the risk of public failure worth it.

While context switching is a PM's tool, it becomes destructive without focus. A leader's job is to protect their team by setting crystal-clear goals and outcomes. This allows product managers to context-switch *productively* within a defined scope, not be pulled in unrelated directions.

When a product team is busy but their impact is minimal or hard to quantify, the root cause is often not poor execution but a lack of clarity in the overarching company strategy. Fixing the high-level strategy provides the focus necessary for product work to create meaningful value.

Pursuing huge, multi-year goals creates a constant anxiety of not doing "enough." To combat this, break the grand vision into smaller, concrete milestones (e.g., "what does a win look like in 12 months?"). This makes progress measurable and shifts the guiding question from the paralyzing "Am I doing enough?" to the strategic "Is my work aligned with the long-term goal?"

Leaders often assume goal alignment. A simple exercise is to ask each team member to articulate the project's goal in their own words. The resulting variety in answers immediately highlights where alignment is needed before work begins, preventing wasted effort on divergent paths.

When strategic direction is unclear due to leadership changes, waiting for clarity leads to stagnation. The better approach is to create a draft plan with the explicit understanding it may be discarded. This provides a starting point for new leadership and maintains team momentum, so long as you are psychologically prepared to pivot.