I don't talk about work a ton for reasons that should be totally obvious, but here's an area where I'm really struggling...

As part of my role, I'm responsible for a lot of strategy. Some of this is also filling a vacuum created by other people, but that's beside the point. So, since I love words, I write words. A few of the things I've put togetehr this year:

1. 3 year roadmap for the organization. The org has never had one of these.
2. 5 year roadmap for post-quantum cryptography
3. Strategy for addressing long-standing container hygiene problems holistically.

With each, I've shared with my peers, my team, some of the more senior leadership, and the feedback I've gotten is all positive. Great, right? Except no, that's not great. The chances that I have gotten all these things right is vanishingly small. What I fear, and a fear that was confirmed yesterday by a friend, is that people are afraid to provide any criticism because of my title and seniority.

This, even after I present them as "draft", "please provide feedback", "criticism is encouraged", "these are not my children", "I know these are deeply imperfect, but the only way forward is through collaboration". None of that has resulted in more than the most cursory feedback.

And yet I know people have read them, because I get positive feedback and can see where they all are in the document.

But then we come back to that title. "Distinguished". It's dangerous. I'm deeply imperfect, and while I'm good at my job (whatever that is lately), that doesn't mean I don't need other people's feedback to really hone in on the future.

I again, welcome feedback from people on how I can create safe space for others. I've tried to always not just acknowledge the feedback, but credit it in the documents as well because they are (ideally) a result of collaboration. But I'm fresh out of ideas here.