The Invisible Job
Disruption hits. You pause. You absorb. You recalibrate.
You are running a business. And, apparently, something else.
You are managing investors, clients, cash flow, suppliers, employees, sales, deadlines, and the hundred small decisions that nobody sees.
And then, you are managing how people react to you. Every time I encounter a new curveball, I find myself doing the same invisible piece of work: stopping, reassessing, and asking myself:
What exactly just hit me?
Is it a curveball? A square one? A sticky one? A dirty one? Or just a particularly weird one?
Because when you don’t understand what you are dealing with, it is much harder to respond to it.
Recently, I was invited to speak at an event. I was pointing out structural issues in the incredibly fast-moving, high-stakes AI sector, more specifically, market distortions that I believe deserve serious strategic attention.
My analysis was dismissed as “negativity.”
And the feedback came from a woman.
That matters, because patriarchy isn’t something only men perpetuate. Women can absorb and reproduce the same expectations about how women are supposed to behave: agreeable, optimistic, warm, accommodating, non-threatening.
Language matters. It shapes what we consider normal, acceptable and valuable.
And language that reframes women’s professional judgment as emotion, negativity, aggression or unpleasantness is not harmless.
It belongs to a much larger system of stereotypes about women and authority.
After all these years of building my business, I have learned that dealing with this requires three stages of work.
Step 1. Identify it.
You can’t respond to what you can’t see. Learn to distinguish genuine feedback from stereotypes disguised as feedback.
Step 2. Shut it down.
Don’t defend yourself. Question the assumption. Sometimes “What do you mean by that?” is enough.
Step 3. Change the environment.
Don’t just learn to navigate the system. Challenge it for others, or build a culture where these patterns have less room to survive.
“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’ Mary Anne Radmacher