We become what we celebrate.
I often talk about the importance of discovery.
About taking time to understand before deciding. About slowing down to learn before rushing to deliver.
And then, a week later, I’m the one asking,
“So, when will we have something to show?”
That’s when I feel the sting of contradiction.
I want reflection, but I also want progress.
I want exploration, but I also want results.
I want discovery, but I also want delivery.
And when I’m honest, I don’t just struggle to balance the two.
I struggle to live inside them.
When discovery drifts on, I start to get nervous.
It feels like being stuck in fog. I can’t see movement, and I start imagining
the worst.
But when delivery takes off, when everything speeds up without a clear direction,
I get just as tense.
I start worrying that we’re running in circles.
It’s twisted, really. The silence of discovery makes me anxious.
The noise of delivery stresses me out.
I seem to want movement and stillness at the same time.
Maybe that’s what leadership actually is. Learning to breathe in both.
The system beneath our good intentions
Every organisation runs on visible and invisible signals.
We talk about values, but people listen to what gets rewarded.
Who gets noticed. Who gets promoted. What earns a “well done.”
Discovery and delivery both matter. One builds understanding,
the other builds trust.
But most systems lean toward delivery because it’s easier to measure.
You can count outputs, but you can’t chart alignment or curiosity.
So we reward what we can see, even when we know it isn’t the whole story.
Discovery starts to look like delay.
Learning starts to feel like a luxury.
And soon, progress becomes more about motion than meaning.
The real discomfort
The hardest part of leading through change isn’t choosing between
discovery and delivery.
It’s holding the discomfort when neither feels right.
When the team is exploring and everything’s uncertain, my instinct
is to accelerate.
When they’re in delivery mode and everything is moving fast,
I feel the panic of losing control.
Some days I’m the one urging patience.
Other days I’m the one saying, “Can we please just make a decision?”
Most days I’m both, within the same hour.
That inner swing isn’t failure. It’s feedback.
It’s the signal that the work matters. That we’re in the messy middle where something real is forming.
The goal isn’t to escape the tension.
It’s to recognise it and design the system that helps everyone move through it.
Designing a better balance
If we want both discovery and delivery, we have to make both visible.
We have to reward clarity, not just completion.
That means asking different questions.
What did we learn this week?
What changed because of what we discovered?
Who helped us see something we hadn’t noticed before?
It also means creating incentives for patience.
Not endless reflection, but deliberate pause.
The kind that allows understanding to catch up with momentum.
Practices that support both
A few things that help me hold the middle ground:
• Begin reviews by talking about what we learned, before what we built.
• Notice and thank the person who reframed the question, not just the one who answered it.
• At the end of each project, make two lists: what we delivered and what we discovered.
• When things move quickly, stop and check if they’re still moving in the right direction.
• When things feel still, ask what might be forming beneath the surface.
A personal reflection
I’m still learning to trust discovery, even when it feels slow.
And to trust delivery, even when it feels messy.
There are moments when I want to push the team to move faster.
And moments when I want to stop everything and start over.
Neither impulse is wrong. They just need each other.
Some of the best outcomes I’ve seen came from teams that were allowed to wander, to question, to reorient before deciding.
And some came from the urgency to move, even when not everything was clear.
The art, I think, is knowing when to hold still and when to go, and accepting that you’ll never feel completely sure in either place.
Reflections for leaders
Ask yourself:
• What do you reward most, movement or meaning?
• Where do your incentives create pressure instead of progress?
• How could you make discovery visible so it isn’t mistaken for delay?
• How do you hold the space between the stillness of learning and the rush of doing?
The payoff
When discovery and delivery stop competing and start feeding each other, teams find a rhythm that feels real.
Progress stops being a sprint or a stall. It becomes something more human, the steady pulse of learning, choosing, adjusting, and moving again.
I’m still figuring out how to live in that rhythm.
I still get restless in the quiet and overwhelmed in the noise.
But the more I practice, the more I see that this is the real work.
Not mastering the balance, but staying with it long enough to let meaning emerge.
Because what we reward becomes who we are.
And I’d rather reward patience, curiosity, and care than the illusion of progress.