The "bring me a rock" game founders play.
I watched it happen five times last week. Different companies, different founders, the same impossible game.
"Bring me a rock."
"This isn't the right rock."
"What kind of rock do you want?"
"I'll know it when I see it."
If you've run a team for more than a year, you have almost certainly made someone play this game. Most founders do it without realizing it.
Here is how it goes. You want something from your team, but you're not actually clear on what you want. So they bring you option after option. Rock after rock. And it's never quite right, because it isn't the rock in your head. You can't tell them what's wrong with any of the ones they brought, because you don't yet know what makes a rock right. You figure you'll know good when you see it.
Let me be blunt. For a founder, this is one of the most destructive habits you can have.
The hidden cost of "I'll know it when I see it"
If you do this, you need to understand what it does to the people who work for you. There is nothing that makes a team feel more stupid, more helpless, more frustrated than this.
Nothing.
Because here is what's happening on the other side of your vague request. Your best people are trying to read your mind. They're second-guessing every decision. They're burning hours building options that might be perfect and will get rejected for reasons you can't put into words. They're slowly losing confidence in their ability to do the job you hired them for.
Eventually they hit one of two breaking points. They dump every possible rock in front of you and hope you finally recognize what you want. Or they quietly stop caring, and then they leave. Neither one is what you wanted. Both are what you get.
"I'll know it when I see it" usually means "I haven't done the hard work of defining what success looks like."
Why founders keep doing it
It's easier to react than to define. It's simpler to critique a draft than to write the criteria. It's more comfortable to keep your options open than to commit to a real requirement. And when you're the founder, nobody is making you do the harder thing.
But that comfort comes straight out of your team's sanity and your company's speed. It is also a quiet way of keeping every real decision routed back through you, which is the opposite of what a growing business needs.
How I handle it from the inside
When I'm embedded with a founder who plays this game, I have a few moves that keep the work moving.
I investigate the use case. I ignore the request for "a rock" and dig into what you're actually trying to accomplish. Decorative? Structural? For the aquarium? Once I understand the job to be done, I can narrow the universe of possible rocks.
I bring a variety pack. A small, deliberate spread. A smooth one, a rough one, a colorful one, a sturdy one. Not to overwhelm you, but to get you to articulate what you do and don't want by comparison.
And sometimes I just make the call. When you can name the problem but not the solution, I pick the rock I believe is right and present it as the answer, not an option. It works more often than it should.
But these are workarounds. They get us through. They are nowhere near as good as you simply knowing what you want.
The better way, and this part is on you
Before you send someone on a rock-finding mission, answer four questions. What problem am I actually trying to solve? What would success look like? What are the real constraints? What are the must-haves versus the nice-to-haves?
If you can't answer those, you're not ready to delegate the task. Do that work first and you give your team a real shot at bringing you the right rock the first time. That isn't micromanaging. That's the job.
And if you're the one stuck playing this game for a founder who won't define it: you're not stupid and you're not slow. You're being asked to read minds, and that was never a reasonable expectation. Document what you try, push for clearer requirements, and know that your frustration is completely valid.