Repeat Yourself.
Repeat Yourself.
Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes
Years ago, I was leading a major initiative. We aligned on trade-offs early. Everyone nodded along.
Me: Hey, CEO, I want to alert you to risk X. Do we feel comfortable with this?
CEO: Yes, that sounds like a reasonable risk. Thanks for surfacing. Let's do it.
One month later...
CEO: How did risk X happen? Did we know about this?? Why didn't we prevent this???
WTF?
Sadly, this happens surprisingly often.
And here's the reality:
This wasn't on the CEO. It was on me.
Sure, I flagged the risk. I got the sign-off. I documented in an email recap. But, somehow, when the risk became real, people acted surprised.
Yes, we had agreed. But I hadn't reinforced the decision along the way.
Product Managers get blindsided by this all the time.
One of the fastest ways a product manager can lose credibility is when a leader says, "Why am I just hearing about this now?”, even if we warned them months ago.
Most of us don't fail because we make the wrong decisions. We fail because we don’t keep people bought into the right ones.
Strong PMs don't just manage the work. They manage expectations — early, often, and in every direction.
Why smart stakeholders get surprised
Two big reasons:
- They're overwhelmed. Senior leaders juggle multiple teams, meetings, and decisions. Your project is just one of many. Even if they care, they’re not tracking it like you are.
- They're optimistic. When people hear "this might go wrong," they nod, but hope it won't. If the downside happens, it still feels like a shock.
We can't change how human brains work. But we can work with those realities.
Repetition isn't just helpful. It's necessary.
Getting buy-in at kickoff is necessary, of course, but not sufficient.
Projects evolve. People forget. Priorities shift. And when they do, folks reinterpret your original strategy or forget it entirely. If we don't keep reinforcing the "why", the "what", and the "how," we risk losing support when we need it most.
This is especially true for long-running or high-risk initiatives.
Alignment is not a moment. It's a muscle.
How to reinforce alignment throughout a project
Think in three phases:
At the beginning: Get explicit about trade-offs
- Don't bury trade-offs. Name them directly.
- Use plain language: "We're choosing to invest in scalability now, which means fewer new features for 2 quarters."
- Document the agreement in writing: a kickoff memo, a slide, a decision doc — anything that can be referred to later.
In the middle: Remind, reframe, re-anchor
Mid-project is where alignment starts to drift. We need to prevent that.
- Include reminders in every update: "We're still on track. As a reminder, we still face risk X. Our mitigation plan is Y, and we'll continue tracking it."
- Revisit risks, not just progress.
- Add narrative to any metrics: we shouldn't assume the numbers speak for themselves.
At the end: Contextualize outcomes
When reporting results, we should frame them in terms of the original strategy.
For example, say we're communicating a delayed launch. Don’t just say, "Feature A launched late." Say, "We traded timeline for quality, as agreed, to reduce rework risk post-launch."
We're not rehashing old info. We're showing leadership by connecting the dots others don't have time to track.
Tactics to apply this week
Here are four simple ways to start reinforcing alignment immediately:
- Schedule a stakeholder update, if you don't already have one on the books.
- Add a "Reminder" section to your next stakeholder update. Just one sentence: "This is consistent with the strategy we aligned on in [month/project doc]."
- Re-share the original decision doc or kickoff deck. It might feel repetitive to you. It's helpful for others.
- Start your next meeting by revisiting the 'why.' "Before we dive into the roadmap, I want to quickly re-anchor us on the goal of this initiative."
The bottom line
If we want stakeholders to stay bought in, we have to be willing to repeat ourselves. This includes repeating risks and trade-offs, and repeatedly selling the strategy.
It's not about playing politics. It's about clarity.
Every reminder you give is a gift: it prevents misalignment, protects your team, and keeps the project on track.
The best PMs don’t just say the right thing once. They say the right thing until it sticks.
Normalize repeating yourself.
