Don’t Let Today’s Noise Drown Out Tomorrow’s Whispers

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but good things come to those who post with intent.

A big part of that has been taking on a new role, one that has quite rightly consumed much of my time and energy, and it has done so in the best possible way. That shift has brought new experiences, different challenges, and some fresh takes on leadership.

One thought I’ve been sitting with is the tension between today’s priorities and the vision you’re trying to build for tomorrow.

Having spent a significant part of my career in startups and early stage businesses, that balance feels very familiar. You have to execute today. Customers need things. Products need improving. Revenue needs to be generated.

There is always another problem to solve and, particularly in a growing business, most of those problems can feel incredibly important at the time.

The things that may really matter in a year, two years or five years rarely arrive with the same urgency. They’re often much quieter: an early pattern, an idea, a different perspective from somebody in the team, a change in the market, or simply a sense that where you’re heading isn’t quite where you intended to go.

Today’s Customer Can Be Very Loud

One of the clearest examples for me is customers.

Early in the life of a business, every customer matters enormously. You’ve worked hard to win them, you need the revenue, and you want them to have a great experience with whatever you’re building.

When something isn’t working, naturally, it gets attention. I’ve seen significant amounts of product and leadership energy move towards solving a customer problem. Meetings happen. Features are discussed. Everyone wants to make things right.

And that’s generally a good instinct. You should listen to customers.

But there is another question worth asking:

Are we solving something that takes us towards the company we want to become, or simply because it is the loudest problem in front of us today?

Sometimes the answer is both. Sometimes it isn’t.

The reality is that an important customer today might not be the customer you’re building around two or three years from now. Your business, product and market will evolve, and they may not evolve with you.

That doesn’t make their feedback less important. It changes how you interpret it.

There is a difference between listening to customers and allowing the loudest customer to determine where you’re going.

Loud Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Important

The same idea applies to people.

We’ve probably all been in a room where one or two people naturally take up more airtime. There are lots of reasons for that: personality, seniority, experience, confidence, or simply being passionate about the subject.

I’ve certainly worked with some incredibly smart people who are also incredibly vocal about what they believe should happen. I’ve also worked with incredibly smart people who aren’t.

That’s something I’ve become much more conscious of over the years.

The person speaking with the most confidence isn’t necessarily the person with the best answer.

Equally, the person saying very little isn’t necessarily disengaged or without an opinion.

They may simply process information differently. They may be listening. They may be thinking. They may see something that the rest of the room hasn’t seen yet.

As a leader, I think there is a responsibility to recognise that.

It’s about being conscious of what we’re actually listening to. Because if we’re not careful, volume can start to look a lot like value.

And they aren’t the same thing.

Some of the Noise Comes From Us

Then there is probably the most difficult version of noise to recognise: our own.

Leadership decisions obviously aren’t made from some completely objective position. We bring ourselves into them: our experiences, our biases, our confidence, our insecurities, and our desire to be right.

I’ve been guilty of all of those things at different points in my career.

Sometimes we want to solve the immediate problem because solving something feels good. There’s visible progress. Something moves from red to green. A customer becomes happier. A difficult conversation goes away.

Thinking about something that might matter in two years doesn’t give you the same immediate reward.

Noise demands a response. Whispers require intention.

Today’s problems generally find a way of making themselves known. The unhappy customer will email you. The missed target will appear in the numbers. The deadline will arrive. The confident person in the meeting will make their opinion heard.

The things that could shape tomorrow don’t necessarily behave like that.

It might be a pattern you’ve started noticing but can’t yet fully explain. It might be somebody in your team quietly questioning an assumption everyone else has accepted.

It might be a product idea that doesn’t feel particularly urgent yet.

Or it might simply be that nagging feeling that while you’re doing a good job solving today’s problems, you’re not entirely sure they’re taking you where you ultimately want to go.

Those signals are much easier to miss.

One Eye on Today, One Eye on Tomorrow

I don’t think the answer is to somehow block out the noise. That would be both unrealistic and, frankly, bad leadership.

Execution matters. Customers matter. Revenue matters. Problems need solving and commitments need delivering.

You can’t build a great business tomorrow if you don’t take care of the one you have today.

But I increasingly believe the opposite is also true. You can’t spend every day responding to whatever is making the most noise and assume you’ll somehow end up exactly where you wanted to go.

There has to be room for both.

Not every loud problem is unimportant. And not every whisper is some profound insight into the future.

It’s knowing what needs your attention today without automatically allowing it to dictate tomorrow. It’s listening to the customer without allowing a single customer to become the strategy. It’s hearing the confident voice in the room while making space for the quieter one. And it’s being self aware enough to recognise when some of the noise is coming from you.

Today’s problems will generally make themselves heard. Tomorrow tends to whisper.