Athena Bulletin

By Cindy Gross

She had every answer except the one that mattered

Cynthia manages a team of IT professionals for a state agency. She is not a technologist. She knows how to run a project, read a room, and move deliverables forward — but when her department committed to an AI modernization initiative, she found herself in a position many people managers know well: responsible for a mandate she didn't design, building adoption for a tool she doesn't fully understand, with a team that understands it better than she does.

She prepared relentlessly. She studied the vendor materials. She memorized the implementation timeline. She could answer every question about the rollout: what the tool does, when it deploys, what the success metrics are. What she couldn't answer, because no one had asked, was: where does this tool plug into how her team already does their best work?

And her team could feel it.

The mandate had come down. The contract was signed. The metrics were assigned: adoption rates, time savings, usage logs. Her job, as she understood it, was to execute. To defend. To know. So she did what prepared people do under pressure: she performed certainty she didn't have.

Her team disengaged. Not because they didn't trust her. Because no one had created space to ask the question already sitting in every team meeting: are we implementing this in a way that uses what we actually know how to do?

As her coach, I asked Cynthia to get on the balcony. Not to question the mandate. It was real, it was funded, it wasn't going away. But to get genuinely curious about what was actually happening underneath it. What had hardened into unquestionable fact? What assumptions were being protected?

Her assumption: her job was to have the answers.

The reality: her team needed someone to ask the questions.

We looked at her Leadership Circle Profile 360 data. She scored high on "Driven" and "Controlling" reactive tendencies. Not a character flaw, just a pattern that had become the wrong tool for this moment. She was spending enormous energy performing competence in a technical domain that wasn't hers, to a team that already had the technical competence. She needed to redirect that energy toward the people she actually led.

She started asking her team direct questions: What problem were you hoping this would solve? What's your current workaround? Where does this tool fit your work, and how do we get you there?

The answers didn't match the dashboard.

One team had a workflow gap the rollout plan hadn't accounted for. Another had a use case the vendor hadn't documented that genuinely excited them. A third had data handling concerns that hadn't surfaced in any status meeting because nobody had asked. Now she had something real to work with. She stopped defending the rollout and started leading it. Implementation plans got updated to reflect how each team actually worked. Adoption moved from compliance to genuine use. Her agency could show not just adoption metrics, but evidence of thoughtful, accountable implementation.

Her team re-engaged. Status meetings got shorter. Cynthia stopped working through lunch.

Here's what this story is really about. In a world where technology is always new, always changing, always being mandated faster than anyone fully understands it, the skill that separates leaders who succeed from leaders who survive is not knowing every answer. It's knowing which question hasn't been asked yet, and creating enough safety, for yourself and your team, to finally ask it.

That's not a natural default under pressure. It's a practiced one. It's what coaching builds.

Public sector tech modernization projects don't fail because the technology is wrong. They fail because the humans who have to use it, trust it, and change how they work because of it were never asked what they needed. That's the gap most implementation plans don't budget for and most contractors don't know how to close. Athena does. Embedding leadership coaching into modernization work isn't a soft add-on. It's what keeps the people and the relationships functional when the pressure is highest — and it's why issues that would stall other projects get resolved faster. Technology is the starting point. Athena knows how to handle what comes after.

___

For more information, check out our Tech Modernization services.

Cindy Gross (she/her) is an executive coach, facilitator, and leadership systems strategist with 25+ years in tech, including 18 years at Microsoft. She specializes in helping leaders and organizations navigate complex change with clarity, equity, and durable results. Learn more about Cindy's work and her Leadership Navigation System — built for leaders who are ready to navigate complexity without losing themselves — at BefriendingDragons.com.  

Cindy works in collaboration with The Athena Group, a human-centered technology modernization consultancy serving state and local government leaders. Learn more at athenaplace.com.