Between Thoughts -Intellectual Musings

On oversized roles, tailored confidence, and why Ready is Late.

Some of us had parents who bought clothes and shoes one or two sizes bigger than we were. All you heard was, “he will grow into it.” And we did grow into it and then we outgrew it, because in those days clothes were made to last. Mine were made in Epping, Cape Town, before clothing and footwear manufacturing left South Africa for China. I have come to realise that this logic applies far beyond childhood scarcity. It applies to a career, and specifically to the moment someone hands you a role before you feel ready for it.

The Board Seat I Didn’t Feel Ready For.
I was offered a board role,  Vice President, Foods, at Unilever  and my first instinct was doubt. Maybe sharpen one or two more competencies. Maybe give it another year. I did not have the kind of voice that announces itself as a shaker and mover, a game-changer, an organic intellectual, regardless of the evidence for or against that claim. I genuinely don’t know where that particular flavour of unearned certainty comes from in people who mistake confidence for competence , who don’t know what they don’t know, and don’t especially care to find out. I had a sound, legitimate portfolio of evidence behind the promotion, and I still doubted myself.
Underneath the self-doubt sat something uglier and more familiar: the whisper that I’d got the role because I was Black,  a quota candidate, an affirmative-action appointment  and that it should have gone to David, Peter or Paul or someone with low melanin.

I called one of my sponsors, who is also my coach and mentor. I told him about the role, the fear, and the accusation running underneath it.
“Remember when you were growing up poor, and they bought you clothes a size or two too big, and told you that you’d grow into it?”
I said yes, I remembered.
He said: take the role. You will grow into it, and eventually you will outgrow it. As long as you’re aware of where you need to temporarily tailor the outfit so it looks like it fits you now,  roll up the sleeves, tuck the fabric back, make it look neat. Take it. Ready is Late.

I took the role. I grew into it. I outgrew it.

Why the Analogy Holds: The Science Underneath the Story.
Provisional selves
When you step into a role that feels two sizes too big, you cannot act like a twenty-year veteran on day one. INSEAD’s Herminia Ibarra studied exactly this transition and named what happens “provisional selves”,  the temporary, trial leadership personas people adopt while they grow into a new identity. Rolling up the sleeves and tucking in the shirt is the behavioural equivalent: you borrow from people who’ve done it before, trial new ways of speaking and deciding, and adjust your boundaries until the behaviour fuses with who you actually are.
The other side of Dunning-Kruger.
The doubting voice is not a warning sign. It’s closer to a green flag. Clance and Imes’s original research on the impostor phenomenon found it clusters in high performers,  people with real conscientiousness and real empathy who nonetheless underrate themselves. The Dunning-Kruger effect works in the other direction: people with the least competence are often the most certain, because the same lack of skill that makes them incompetent also makes them unable to recognise incompetence. Awareness of the oversized fit is what keeps you vigilant, teachable, and observant. Certainty is what keeps you blind.

The Zone of Proximal Development.
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development describes the space between what you can do alone and what you can do with support,  the space that is achievable with scaffolding, as opposed to the comfort zone below it or the panic zone above it. If you only take roles you’re already fully equipped for, you’re operating in the comfort zone, and by definition no real growth happens there. A good sponsor maps your capability to your ZPD, then supplies the scaffolding,  coaching, cover, access,  that closes the gap.

Sponsorship is not mentorship.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s research at the Center for Talent Innovation draws a sharp line between the two. A mentor tells you how to roll up the sleeves. A sponsor spends their own political capital protecting you while your sleeves are rolled up. Hewlett’s data found professionals with an active sponsor were markedly more likely to advance to the next tier,  the sponsor is the one holding the tailor’s pins while the organisation gives you the grace period you need to grow into the seat.

The Two Equations.
Oversized role + zero support = burnout and failure.
Oversized role + sponsor and coach = accelerated competence.

The equation assumes you have the toolset, skillset and heartset.

Built to Last: The Epping Factor.
There’s an economic truth folded into the memory of Epping’s textile industry. Before manufacturing moved to fast, disposable production in East Asia, South African clothing factories built garments with generous hems and sturdy seams, because working-class families needed clothes to survive multiple growth spurts. My upbringing, navigating scarcity, fighting for opportunity, building grit, is that same high-quality textile. I was not manufactured as fast fashion. The character has deep seams and a durable weave, built specifically to withstand pressure. It does not rip at the seams under a boardroom’s weight.

The Tailoring: Two Gaps, Two Playbooks.
My mentor and I identified two specific gaps to close in the new role: finance and accounting,  the numbers  and political manoeuvring,  the people. Neither closes by waiting to become an expert. Both close through targeted tactics.

Tailoring The Finance Gap.
Non-financial directors are usually afraid of being exposed in a balance sheet review. But effective directors aren’t auditors, CAs,  they’re disciplined, question-focused overseers. A few tactics do most of the work:
Start with the Cash Flow Statement, not the Income Statement. A company can show a profit on paper and still run out of cash.
Track three baseline ratios rather than chasing every formula: liquidity (can it pay short-term debts?), profitability (is the core business actually making money?), and leverage (how reliant is it on borrowed money?).
Book a 30–60 minute “pre-meeting inoculation” with the CFO or Audit Committee chair a few days before the board meeting. Frame it as alignment,  “I want to understand the narrative behind the Q3 variances before we sit down”  and the fear of a public blind spot disappears. Trade “What does this number mean?”,  which exposes a gap,  for a macro question that shifts the burden of proof: “What operational assumptions drove this variance?” or “How does this trajectory affect our capital allocation strategy next year?”
I brought in a finance coach,  I’ll call her YC from Cuba,  who reframed the entire exercise for me in one sentence: an Annual Financial Statement is not a set of numbers, it is a set of decisions. Make better decisions and the numbers follow. She reminded me I wasn’t allergic to numbers,  I’d been a statistician and a data scientist,  so the task wasn’t to become a CFO. It was to move from Basic Appreciation to Working Knowledge, and over time toward Fully Operational, while trusting the CFO and her team to sit at Fully Operational and Leading Edge, because that is their specialism, not mine. The same logic applies to supply chain: Working Knowledge is the target, Leading Edge is the Supply Chain Officer’s job, not the generalist director’s.

Tailoring The Political Gap.
Boardrooms are political environments, and the real decisions rarely happen inside the meeting itself. Influence, not title, is what moves outcomes. Mapping the room across two axes,  influence and support, makes the terrain visible:
High Influence, Low Support — The Sceptics
Pre-wire them early. They can sink an idea without ever opposing it publicly.
High Influence, High Support — The Champions
Your primary allies. Brief them first; let them carry the room.
Low Influence, Low Support — The Observers.
Keep informed. Low cost to maintain, no need to spend political capital here.
Low Influence, High Support — The Cheerleaders. Cultivate over time. Today’s cheerleader is tomorrow’s champion.

Three habits do most of the political work.

First, pre-wiring,  the Japanese concept of nemawashi, laying the groundwork,  means a bold or controversial idea is never introduced for the first time in the room. It’s circulated individually to key influencers weeks ahead, objections are handled quietly, and alignment is secured before anyone has to defend a position publicly.

Second, strategic silence (WAIT): WAIT-Why Am I Talking. New board members tend to over-talk to prove they belong, but the most influential voices in a room typically speak less and later,  listen through the bulk of the debate, map where people stand, then synthesise. Carry a card written WAIT to remind your self to talk less and talk last.

Third, the echo chamber: building on another director’s point,  “Building on Director X’s point about supply chain risk, we should also consider…”,  builds an instant, low-cost alliance.

Quick Fix vs. Lasting Fit.
The Quick Fix (roll up the sleeves now)
Finance: pre-meeting CFO briefings; asking strategic variance questions.

Politics: one-on-one pre-wiring; mapping the room’s informal influencers.

The Lasting Fit (outgrow the gap later)
Complete an executive finance or director certification programme. Avoid over certification and under exposure. Remember 70% on the job, you are what you repeatedly Do and you remember what you repeatedly  Do. Do not over index on certification. You can get the finance lessons without the certificate.

Add 20% the Village – Build long-term reputational capital and industry alliances.

The formal and informal training and education only accounts for 10% if not less as you move up the ladder. Continous learning and enever ending curiosity should never die, always be a student, but you do not always need many certificates to prove your worth.

Ready Is Late.
The clothes were never a lie. They were a promise with a timeline attached. Nobody handed a nine-year-old a jacket three sizes too big and told him to become a different body by morning,  they handed him room to grow, and trusted the growing to happen. A stretch role works the same way, provided somebody is willing to be the tailor: a sponsor who spends capital on your behalf, a coach who reframes the numbers as decisions, a mentor who has already worn the oversized jacket and knows exactly where to roll the sleeve.

Waiting for the role to fit before you take it is how competent people spend a decade in comfortable clothes that never taught them anything. Taking it, tailoring it in public, and growing until you outgrow it, that is the whole method. Ready is Late.

Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu.
=================

Dr. Mzamo Masito

Between Thoughts – Intellectual Musings

Where the uncomfortable questions get a seat at the table.