You're Heard. I Think.

The chat

A few weeks ago, my team and I were naming our app over WhatsApp. The messages were flying. Reelo. Droppy. Dropy. HuiXian threw in a few she really liked. Good ones, actually. But the domains were either taken or eye-wateringly expensive. I was moving fast because I had to. We had eight days from idea to App Store launch, and I was not going to let us get stuck on a name.

From the naming chat. The criterion was simple: the name had to feel as natural as drinking water.

My tech lead and I landed on Dodeez. It stuck. We moved on.

HuiXian's names didn't make it. I explained why. I told her the work was good. And then I kept going, because there were twelve other things demanding my attention that afternoon.

I'm still not sure if she felt heard. I told myself she did. That's different.

The eight days

The deadline was my idea. Eight days because 520, the 20th of May, 我爱你 in Chinese internet slang. This app is something I genuinely love. I wanted to launch it on a date that meant something.

But here's the thing. My team didn't feel the 我爱你 part. They felt the eight days part.

I was leading from a place of love. They were living with the pressure.

I had set the constraint before anyone else was in the room. And when I brought them in, I framed it as a team effort. But the biggest call had already been made. There's a word for that. It's not collaboration. It's alignment after the fact.

I'm not saying that's wrong. Sometimes that's exactly what needs to happen. When you need to move, you move. But I want to be honest about what it is.

强势

I admit I can be 强势. Forceful. And for a long time I treated that as just part of how I'm wired. Something to acknowledge and move past.

But lately I've been sitting with a harder question. Is being 强势 the flaw, or is something else underneath it?

I think the real thing is this: I find it difficult to stay present after the hard call has been made. I explain the decision. I give the feedback. I try to make sure people feel their work mattered. And then I move to the next thing, because the next thing is already here.

What I don't always do is check if it landed. If HuiXian actually walked away feeling like her contribution shaped something, even if it didn't win. That follow-through, the moment after the explanation, is where I go quiet without meaning to.

What heard actually means

I used to think making people feel heard meant listening during the conversation. Opening the floor. Considering the options. And I do all of that. But I've started to think that's only half of it.

The real test is not the conversation. It's the silence after the decision goes a different way.

Because in that silence, people fill in the blanks themselves. Sometimes they land on "he considered my idea and went another direction." Sometimes they land on "my ideas never make it anyway." You don't always know which one happened. And when you're moving at eight-day speed, you rarely slow down enough to find out.

That gap is what I'm working on. Not being less decisive. Not softening the calls. Just being more present in the moment after.

To my team

If you're reading this and you work with me, or you will one day, here's what I want you to know.

I will make the final call. And it will be informed. I will have thought about what you said. If your idea doesn't make it, it doesn't mean it didn't matter. It means we had to move, and the constraints shaped the decision more than the ideas did. That's usually what happens in the early days of building something real.

What I need from you: don't go quiet. Have a voice, always. Sound off when something feels wrong. Come to me directly if the direction stops making sense to you. A team that stays silent to keep things smooth will break in ways that are much harder to fix later.

And if you ever feel like your contribution disappeared into the noise without acknowledgment, call that out too. That one is probably on me. I'm still learning how to slow down in the moments that matter most.

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Dodeez launched on 520. Eight days, idea to App Store. It was real. I'm proud of what the team did.

But I keep thinking about the names that didn't make it. And whether the people who brought them know that I saw the work, even when I was already sprinting to the next thing.

That's the thing I'm building alongside the product. The habit of stopping, for just a moment, to make sure the silence after a hard decision doesn't say something I didn't mean.