Productivity Is a Mirror: Fear, Power, and Identity in Disguise
Post 2 of 3 in the Lens → Mirror → Map series
In my first few weeks ramping up at Pivotal Labs I sat in on a meeting that, in retrospect, completely changed the way I think about product work.
The team was demoing progress and we wrapped the session with a list of requests and new ideas from the stakeholders. The meeting ended, and walking alongside my pairing buddy, I suggested what we needed to do next.
“Okay,” I said. “So now we just figure out how to make all those changes they asked for happen, right?”
He looked at me and said, simply: “No.”
I was stunned. That’s the whole point of these meetings, isn’t it? To listen to stakeholders and act on it?
Then he said something that’s stuck with me ever since:
“They have an agenda. We’re building a product. Their feedback is an input for us but they don’t actually know what should be in that product better than we do.”
That moment cracked something open for me. Up until then, I wasn’t really making decisions. I was performing the role of someone who listens well and executes diligently.
But I wasn’t forming my own opinions or allowing myself to say no and trust my own judgment. I wasn’t shaping anything. I was mistaking productivity for responsiveness.
And what I realized is: how we work often reflects who we think we’re supposed to be.
From Lens to Mirror
In Part 1 of this series, I explored the idea that productivity can be a lens to inspect how you make decisions.
But it’s more than just how you operate. What you do reflects your fears, your assumptions, the risks you accept, and the invisible rules you follow.
It becomes a mirror that shows not just your process, but your posture.
💡 TL;DR
Your productivity system is never just a set of tools. It’s a reflection of power, fear, and identity: yours and your team’s.
If something feels off, it might not be something broken, but instead something being protected.
Productivity Reflects Fear
There is an element of fear behind most dysfunction, and that makes it easy to default to survival instincts.
When someone fears being wrong they hesitate to make decisions or take calculated risks.
Someone afraid of saying no or being seen as a blocker will overcommit to everything.
A team who fears being judged might refuse to descope a release, worried about shipping something unfinished.
An org with no real conviction about what good looks like might lean too heavily on scoring models and dogma.
Our systems reveal emotional defaults. And fear manifests as structure.
Productivity Reveals Power
It’s tempting to think about what you prioritize as entirely objective. But not only is it rarely neutral, it’s heavily influenced by power dynamics at play.
Which “quick ideas” from executives always get added? They have power.
Which work gets cut when resources get tight? They lack power.
Who feels safe saying no? Who doesn’t?
As much as we’d like to claim our priorities are purely about outcomes and value, many roadmaps are political documents as much as strategic ones.
One of my favorite definitions comes from Rich Mironov: “Prioritization is not an objective ranking exercise. It’s a negotiated settlement among powerful stakeholders with competing incentives.”
When teams struggle to prioritize, sometimes it’s because they’re stuck in an invisible negotiation they aren’t supposed to acknowledge.
I’ll call it what it is: you’re negotiating power.
Productivity Embeds Identity
Fear comes from care. When we pour ourselves into our work, our identity gets wrapped up in how it’s perceived. So when a decision threatens the work, it feels like a threat to us
And even when your identity gets wrapped up in good things, like being competent, collaborative, or valuable, sometimes your system starts to bend to support that image.
You’ve probably met these people:
The Over-Deliverer: always “delivering” to prove their worth, tying value to visible output.
The Consensus Builder: seeks constant alignment, needs harmony to quiet a fear of being disliked.
The Optics Manager: prioritizes what looks impressive to leadership, regardless of real impact.
You might assume you’re optimizing for outcomes. But really, you’re optimizing for perception.
The point is, a lot of work happens to reinforce how people want to be seen more than to move the product forward.
Mirror Types: How Fear, Power, and Identity Show Up in Systems
So how does all of this manifest? These aren’t hard archetypes, but they show up often enough to feel familiar.
The Prover Provers are afraid of not being seen as valuable, capable, or trustworthy and they believe they have to “earn their keep” constantly. Because they often lack formal authority they try to gain power through high output because they equate productivity with credibility. This is reinforced by their self-perception as a doer or high performer. Saying no feels like failing that identity. As a result, they overcommit, take on too much, and burn out. Their backlog becomes a monument to people-pleasing.
The Avoider Avoiders are afraid of being wrong, challenged, or exposed. They tend to believe that trust comes from never making mistakes, so they play it safe, avoiding bold decisions or high-stakes bets. They often cede decision-making authority because they don’t feel empowered to take risks. Their identity is wrapped up in being cautious and thoughtful. But in practice, they stall progress and retreat into low-risk work. The roadmap fills with incremental changes while meaningful movement lags behind.
The Absorber Absorbers fear disappointing others, especially people with power. They don’t feel confident rejecting leadership input, so they say yes to everything in order to maintain access, trust, or goodwill. Because they don’t have formal authority, they rely on being seen as collaborative and dependable. Their identity is shaped around being helpful, adaptable, and “easy to work with.” But that same flexibility becomes a liability. They absorb scope creep, overextend their team, and quietly let strategic clarity unravel.
The Analyst Analysts are afraid of being blamed for a wrong or subjective decision. They seek protection in frameworks, scoring systems, and process rigor, not for insight, but for insulation. They often hold power or accountability without enough psychological safety to make gut calls. Their identity is tied to being logical, objective, and data-driven. If a decision can’t be justified through a model, it doesn’t feel safe. The result is slow decisions, false precision, and a culture that prioritizes defensibility over direction.
You’ll notice none of these are about laziness or lack of strategy. They’re about self-preservation, coping, and unwritten expectations.
And because these patterns are often rewarded (or at least not dis-incentivized) they become institutionalized.
You Can’t Fix What You Won’t Face
Rarely do we pause to ask: What is our current system reflecting back to us?
You can’t solve something until see it and recognize it as a problem. We spend so much time trying to optimize our systems but the way we work is not always the problem that should be solved.
If productivity is a mirror, the goal isn’t to make the reflection prettier, it’s to get honest about what’s there. And once you do that, I’ve found you can name what’s underneath and begin to build something better.
That’s where I see things going next:
From Mirror → Map.
Where you don’t just inspect how and what you work on, you design and shape your system on purpose.