The Cost of Being the One Who Decides

For the first 30 seconds of my presentation to the board, I could not speak.

I had gone into the room to tell them that we were not going to deliver what we had said we would deliver. We could have launched faster. The technical route was available, the argument for it was reasonable, and choosing it would have allowed everyone to keep the original commitment.

I believed it was the wrong decision.

That silence remains one of the proudest moments of my career.

Not because I was commanding or eloquent. I was neither. I am proud of it because, after those 30 seconds, I owned the decision that needed to be owned.

I began by knowing less than the people I led

This happened early in my career at Banesco, during my transition from law into technology and product.

It was my first real management position. I was responsible for bringing engineering, product, legal and marketing together, listening to their different perspectives and presenting the final outcome as something the organization could act upon.

I did not have the deepest technical expertise in the room. Moving from law into product made that impossible.

In hindsight, that was an advantage.

I could not simply assume I knew more than everybody else. I had to listen. But listening never meant blindly accepting somebody’s recommendation. Opinions opened doors; once a door was open, I went through it. I asked questions, studied the subject and went deep enough to understand what the recommendation would mean for the customer and the business.

My authority did not come from knowing how to build every feature. It came from refusing to remain superficial and returning the discussion to a basic question: does this make sense for the person we are serving?

That question eventually brought me into the boardroom.

The faster answer was the wrong answer

Banesco had an extensive branch network, and we wanted to lead the transition toward mobile banking.

The technical recommendation was pragmatic: reuse the existing online transaction engine inside the mobile application. We could go live sooner and avoid building a separate product foundation.

The proposal worked technically. But I asked how we would measure mobile adoption. How would we know which transactions had moved from branches or online banking into mobile? How would we identify mobile behaviour, profile those customers and learn how to serve them differently?

The answer was that we would not.

At that moment, the apparently efficient option stopped making sense to me. We were talking about leading mobile banking while choosing an architecture that would prevent us from understanding the mobile customer.

I decided we needed to build the capability properly.

That meant more work and a later delivery. It also meant going to the board and explaining why the commitment had changed.

I was not frightened when I went silent. I was ashamed.

I was ashamed that my boss might believe he had made a mistake by choosing me. More importantly, I felt that I was letting people down.

One of the deepest principles in my upbringing is that trust is earned by delivering what you said you would deliver. In that room, I had to admit that I was not doing that.

But delivering the original date would have required us to build something I no longer believed was right. I could protect the commitment or protect the outcome. I could not do both.

Eventually, even the engineering leadership agreed that changing direction had been the right move.

The larger lesson stayed with me: start with the person you are serving, understand how they behave and what creates value for them, and then decide what technology is required. Never begin with the technology and force the customer to justify it afterward.

But the human lesson was more difficult: sometimes doing the right thing requires disappointing people who trusted you to do something else.

Ownership is remaining after the decision

I do not believe that leaders have to be right all the time. We are going to have bad days and make bad decisions. That is part of the job.

What matters is whether we own them.

You cannot sweep a decision under the rug when the result turns against you. You cannot disappear behind the team, pretend the outcome belonged to somebody else or rewrite the story after the fact.

Leadership means making the reasoning visible and running with the consequences.

That is not the same as stubbornness. Admitting that a decision was wrong does not weaken a leader’s position. In the right culture, it strengthens the team.

The operating agreement I try to establish is straightforward. We will debate honestly. We will make decisions we do not all agree with. Once a direction is selected, we will support it together. If the evidence later tells us that the decision was wrong, we will acknowledge it, change and move forward.

I have supported many decisions I did not personally favour because I expect the same commitment when my recommendation is selected.

There is no room for waiting quietly to say, “I told you so.”

If it goes south, I step forward

When I joined The Workshop, one of the early presentations prepared by the product team described a set of features but did not explain their value to the customer.

I challenged the team. Why were we presenting what had been developed without explaining why it mattered?

Their answer exposed the existing operating model. Product had traditionally received instructions from commercial teams about what to build. Product managers were not expected to formulate the customer value behind the work.

I raised the concern, but the team felt comfortable presenting in the format they knew. We agreed to proceed.

Management responded exactly as I suspected it might: why are you doing this, and where is the value?

I was the first person to step forward and own it.

That is part of the contract. If we discussed the risk, made the decision collectively and committed to the approach, I shield the team externally. We then examine the failure internally and determine what needs to change.

There is a different kind of failure: information is withheld, usually because somebody is afraid, and the problem is allowed to explode before the leader knows it exists.

Even then, the leader shows their face to customers, headquarters or senior management. But the internal conversation has to go deeper. The question is no longer only what failed. It is: why did somebody believe they could not trust me with the truth earlier?

Accountability is not a personality type

My first emotion when information has been withheld from me is anger.

I have always tried to build belonging, trust, camaraderie and even brotherhood inside my teams. Failure was part of my own education; I began in technology and product with almost no direct expertise. I therefore find mistakes much easier to accept than an absence of accountability.

But I also have to examine my part in creating the silence.

I am intense, competitive, visible and energetic. An introverted or more reserved person may experience that leadership style differently from the way I intend it. I cannot claim to create safety and then refuse to ask whether my own reaction made somebody afraid.

I will adapt the communication channel. Somebody may need to raise the issue privately, put it in writing, take time to organize their thinking or use a structured check-in. I do not require everyone to communicate like me.

What I will not remove is the obligation to communicate.

Accountability is not an extroverted or introverted characteristic. Once we establish what people can expect from me, what I expect from them and how we will work together, that agreement becomes a commitment.

The channel can change. The responsibility cannot.

The team can carry the leader

For a long time, leadership can look like a one-directional burden. The leader makes the decision, shows their face and protects everybody standing behind them.

But who protects the leader?

My answer is the team.

I understood this most clearly at Creamfinance. There were periods when I was at odds with headquarters about how the business needed to pivot and grow. The disagreement was normal, but it became frustrating.

At one point I shared that frustration with my team. They did not see it as weakness. They embraced me, supported me and, at particular moments, carried the same conviction toward headquarters.

That experience changed the image of leadership for me. The leader does not have to be a heroic figure who permanently absorbs everyone else’s fear while pretending to have none. A genuine team can support its leader too — but the leader has to be willing to let the team see that the weight exists.

And outside the company, there is family. The people who know the person underneath the decisions.

I would hug him

If I could return to that Banesco boardroom and sit beside the younger version of myself during those 30 seconds of silence, I would not give him advice.

I would hug him.

He had the balls to do the right thing when it would have been easier not to. The bank might have enjoyed months or even years of apparent success with the faster solution. But we would not have understood what we were doing, and we would not have led.

I would hug the Juan who left law to pursue product and technology. I would hug the Juan who left the corporate world to pursue a different life. I would hug every earlier version who committed to something he believed and accepted the consequences.

That commitment has taken me into dark places at times. But it has never taken me away from who I am.

I hope those earlier versions would hug the person I am now too.

Sometimes the one who decides needs that.