One thing I’ve learned in all these years at GUVI: the higher you go in an organisation, the less of the ground reality you actually see.
Not because people are dishonest.
But because information gets sieved on the way up.
The Sieve Effect at the Top
Managers polish updates before they share.
Teams hesitate to escalate bad news.
And by the time it reaches leadership, what you get is a curated highlight reel, not the raw truth.
Here’s how it played out at GUVI.
When a campaign worked, I’d hear about it within hours. Screenshots, Slack, even phone calls.
When a campaign bombed? Weeks later, it reached me as a mild line in a review doc. By then, the damage had already spread.
Success stories travel fast.
Failures travel slowly.
And the slow ones usually change shape on the way up.
That’s the real danger: leaders start making calls on half-truths.
Numbers look cleaner than they are. Problems look smaller than they really are.
It’s like travelling with only half the map.
What this taught me
Dashboards won’t save you. Town halls won’t show you.
If you want sharp decisions, you need raw edges.
So I started building unfiltered channels:
Skip-levels: Talking directly to the team two layers down.
Listening tours: Sitting with learners, partners, interns - the voices closest to the ground.
DMs always open: Letting people bypass the chain when they need to.
But honestly, for me, leadership is far from knowing everything.
It’s about creating enough cracks in the sieve so reality slips through.
But here’s the part most leaders miss: the sieve is not only a leadership problem. It’s also a team problem.
When I was a fresher, I used to go to my leaders with not just wins but also my misses. I had the space to admit when something didn’t work. That space built trust, and it helped my leaders make better calls.
Now, as a leader, I expect the same from my reportees. Bring me the wins, yes. But also bring me the misses. Because leadership is not about punishing mistakes, it’s about fixing them before they spread.
What Most Miss
If you’re a leader: don’t just ask “How is it going?” Ask “What is not going well?” every single time.
If you’re a team member: don’t polish the bad news. Share it early, share it raw.
That one shift makes every org sharper.
Takeaway
Success will reach you. Failure won’t. Go looking for it.
The earlier you know what’s broken, the quicker you can fix it.
Build trust so people feel safe to share the ugly truths.
Stay tuned for the next edition, where I’ll share why a goal that can’t be tracked can never be scaled.