“I Thought You Knew” Is How Risks Reach You Late

TheAutisticLeader™️ Podcast · Sep 26, 2026 · 12m

Season 3 · Episode 1.

A risk reaches you late, and the person who saw it says, “I thought you knew.” Anyone who has led a team has said some version of “raise it early, no surprises,” and it is good advice. It also leaves your people to guess what counts as early for a given decision, what you already know, and what would surprise you, and your organization pays for every hour of that guessing.

In this episode I give the advice its credit, along with the 1980 Harvard Business Review article “Managing Your Boss,” in which John Gabarro and John Kotter made it each person's job to find out which…