Putting Stakes in the Ground: Leading Through Broken Systems and Change
Leading Through Chaos
Every leader eventually faces a season where nothing seems to work, whether you inherited it or walked in by choice. The roadmap is shifting, metrics are slipping, and progress feels like running in sand. In those moments, leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about choosing where to stand.
When uncertainty is high, it’s tempting to wait for clarity before acting. But clarity rarely comes first. The best leaders create it by putting stakes in the ground: choosing a direction, however small, and committing to move forward.
Real leadership lives in the tension between urgency and stability. You can’t solve everything at once, but you can orient your team toward what matters most. And when you don’t know, you do what product leaders do best: gather data, listen to signals, and use evidence to chart the next step forward.
The Reality of Leading Through Broken Systems
Even strong leaders can lose motivation when progress stalls. The work gets heavier, meetings repeat, and wins feel smaller. But progress, like endurance training, is built through consistent, patient repetition. You don’t see results after one sprint; you build strength through form and persistence.
Leading through broken systems works the same way. You can’t overhaul everything at once. But you can show up with steadiness and consistency when everyone else feels scattered. Consistency is the leadership version of muscle memory.
That doesn’t mean standing still. When systems start to break down, leaders must become great pattern-finders. You won’t always know what data or signals matter most, so start by listening broadly. Track where velocity dips, where ownership blurs, or where decisions keep looping. These are early indicators of strain.
Iteration is key. Form a hypothesis, test it, learn, adjust. The faster you refine what you’re watching for, the faster you’ll find the true root cause instead of chasing noise. Leading through broken systems means learning in motion, building clarity as you move, not waiting for perfect data.
Diagnosing What’s Really Broken
Before fixing anything, understand what’s wrong. Many teams jump straight to solutions like new tools, new processes, or new priorities without diagnosing the real issue. Good leaders slow down just enough to collect the right data, not more of it.
Layer inputs from multiple sources:
- Game KPIs and behavioral data: Track where retention, conversion, or engagement slip. Which mechanics or events fail to sustain interest? For more, see Defining the Right Metrics: Leading vs. Lagging KPIs
- Team feedback and evaluations: Are ownership lines unclear? Are functions burned out or working in silos? Team health mirrors product health.
- Cross-functional alignment: Where do decisions loop or communication stall? These are structural weak points.
The goal isn’t reacting to every signal. It’s finding the root tension. That could be process gaps, tool limits, unclear goals, or misaligned incentives. As a product leader, your job is to connect these patterns and see clearly. Once you know where clarity is missing, you can decide where to place your stake and rebuild.
Why Stakes Matter
Putting a stake in the ground means declaring what matters most when everything feels chaotic. It gives the team something to align around and creates momentum. It can also serve as a data collection point, a baseline for progress, and a bar for setting new standards.
A stake doesn’t need to be big. It just needs to be clear: “This is the problem we’re solving.” “This is what good looks like.” “This is what we’re saying no to.” Clarity turns uncertainty into action.
The Cost of Avoiding Stakes
Without stakes, teams fall into endless debates and hesitation. The longer you avoid commitment, the more energy drains away. Indecision erodes trust and replaces progress with caution. Before long, the team loses confidence, not because of failure, but because of inaction.
When Everything Feels Broken: Teams, Games, and Systems
Sometimes it’s not just one thing that’s broken. It’s everything. A team that’s lost trust, a game that’s losing players, or a system under strain. Each breaks differently, but all share the same pattern: disconnection between people, process, and product.
Broken Teams
You know a team is breaking before the metrics show it. Meetings feel performative, ownership blurs, feedback filters through politics. People stop surfacing issues because they’ve stopped believing things can change.
It might be a talent gap or leadership misalignment, but at its core, it’s about lost trust, trust in direction, decisions, or each other. That’s your cue to restore clarity and purpose. Morale doesn’t improve through slogans; it improves through shared wins. Give the team one meaningful problem to solve together. Trust returns through momentum, not speeches.
Broken Games
A broken game is easier to diagnose because you have frameworks, KPIs, and player feedback to guide you. The dashboards might look fine, but the energy is gone. Players aren’t angry, they’re indifferent.
Start with the fundamentals. Review retention and engagement KPIs, check sentiment trends, and reconnect with player feedback loops. The signals are usually there; they just need context. If players stop caring, it’s rarely a missing feature. It’s that the product stopped delivering on its core fantasy or player promise.
The fix isn’t speed; it’s empathy. Return to the player experience. Revisit the moment the game worked, not mechanically but emotionally. Reconnect the product to what made it meaningful. When you rebuild from that truth, the metrics will follow.
Broken Systems
Broken systems show up as velocity issues, missed milestones, longer QA cycles, and growing bug counts. These aren’t product failures; they’re process breakdowns. The key question is whether your systems are designed for repeatability or just survival.
Partner closely with Production to understand what’s really happening. They bridge planning and execution, translating operational chaos into insight. Review sprint velocity, bug density, and content pipeline throughput together. Sometimes the data shows a need to stress-test for efficiency; other times, to slow down for quality. Knowing which lever to pull is everything.
Process health isn’t fixed by adding more process. It’s fixed through clarity, prioritization, and trust. Production can help identify what’s truly blocked versus what’s misaligned. Once you understand that distinction, recalibrate your cadence. Invest in better tools, simplify approvals, or pause to strengthen the foundation.
The best PM and Production partnerships treat process as a living system: measured, tuned, evolved. Together, you can rebuild not just pipelines, but confidence. Stability isn’t the absence of pressure; it’s the ability to adapt under it.
The Common Thread
Whether it’s a team, a game, or a system, the leadership pattern is the same. Diagnose before you direct. Pick one stake to anchor the rebuild. Progress doesn’t come from fixing everything. It starts with finding one solid place to stand.
Choosing Where to Put the Stakes in the Ground
When uncertainty is high, it’s tempting to chase the loudest problem. But strong leaders choose stakes based on leverage, not noise. Ask three questions:
- Where is clarity most missing? Where do decisions keep stalling? That’s where your team needs conviction.
- What decision unblocks the most people? The right stake restores momentum across functions.
- What aligns with long-term values, not short-term comfort? The best stakes anchor the team in purpose, not panic.
Stakes evolve as context shifts. But someone has to go first. When you choose a direction, you give others permission to act. Even if the stake moves later, placing it restores confidence because movement follows belief.
The Emotional Side of Change
Leadership isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about helping people move forward even when things feel uncertain. The moments that test you most are the ones that shape your steadiness, your empathy, and your ability to turn doubt into direction.
When things are unclear, conviction gives people something to hold on to. It’s not about pretending to be confident; it’s about modeling calm action. Each choice, no matter how small, helps restore trust and reorient the team toward progress.
The best leaders lead through uncertainty by choosing clarity over comfort, learning over control, and courage over certainty. Progress begins the moment you act with purpose. Place your stake, take the next step, and let conviction become your anchor.