Don't Show Them Everything at Once
Why Progressive Disclosure is a Manager's Secret Weapon
Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.
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You're at an izakaya restaurant in Manhattan, staring down at the overly complicated tablet ordering system. Dozens of dishes, countless modifications, nested menus that lead to more menus. You're hungry, overwhelmed, and increasingly annoyed. You just want dinner, not a design puzzle.
When you finally need help, you discover that even requesting human assistance requires navigating to a sub-menu where you literally add "server" to your cart and select quantity. "Just give me the next step," you mutter, before flagging down an actual human, relieved to bypass the digital absurdity.
That night stuck with you because it mirrored something you've seen countless managers get wrong: They flood their teams with the whole "menu" — the entire strategic vision, every possible initiative, mountains of context — when all people really need is clarity on what to do next. The irony? These managers think they're being transparent and thorough. They're actually creating paralysis.
The Big Idea
Progressive disclosure isn't just for elegant user experience; it's essential for leadership. Great managers don't bury teams under the weight of every possibility. They carefully reveal information, just enough and just in time, to keep people focused, confident, and moving forward. It's not about withholding; it's about curating. Because when everything feels urgent, nothing actually is.
Think of it as the difference between handing someone a GPS versus throwing them a globe. Both contain the information they need. Only one helps them get where they're going.
It's recognizing a fundamental truth about leadership — your primary job isn't providing all the answers. It's creating momentum and clarity through constraint. The best leaders are editors, not encyclopedias.
Complexity is Costly
We've all been there: the all-hands meeting where leadership shares the "complete vision" with forty-seven strategic pillars, endless OKRs, competing priorities that somehow all matter equally. People nod along, scribbling notes they'll never revisit. Two weeks later, when you check in on progress, you get blank stares and busy work. The team isn't lazy or confused — they're cognitively overloaded.
Consider the genius of transit maps. Harry Beck's 1931 London Underground design revolutionized navigation by showing only what matters — connections and sequence. Not geographic accuracy, not street-level detail, not the curvature of every tunnel. Just enough to get you from here to there.
This principle proved so powerful that NYC just embraced it again — their new 2025 subway map deliberately sacrifices geographic precision for clarity, reviving elements of Massimo Vignelli's controversial 1972 design. Back then, New Yorkers rejected Vignelli's abstract approach and demanded "accurate" maps that showed every curve of track. Fifty years later, we've learned that accuracy isn't clarity. The new map strips away geographic fidelity to highlight what actually matters: how to get where you're going.
That's progressive disclosure at its finest — complexity stripped to its functional essence. Sometimes you have to wait decades for people to realize that more information isn't better information.
The research backs this up. Miller's Law tells us humans can hold roughly seven items in working memory. Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory goes further, showing how excessive information actively impairs learning and decision-making. When managers dump everything at once, they're not empowering teams — they're ensuring nothing sticks.
I know what you're thinking: "But I believe in transparent leadership!" So do I. The difference is recognizing that transparency and clarity aren't the same thing.
I learned this the hard way. Fresh into management, I'd share everything with my team: board deck insights, long-term roadmaps, every executive concern. I thought radical transparency meant total transparency. Instead, I created a team that spent more time worrying about hypothetical futures than shipping actual features. One engineer finally pulled me aside: "Frank, I just need to know what to build this sprint."
That's when it hit me: Clarity isn't about perfect information — it's about perfect focus.
The Power of Progressive Disclosure
In design, progressive disclosure means revealing complexity gradually — showing basic functions first, advanced options later. Gmail doesn't explain filters before you've sent your first email. Good design respects the user's journey.
Good management works the same way. It's about aligning visibility with readiness, matching information to capacity. Not because your team can't handle complexity, but because they shouldn't have to juggle what isn't relevant yet. You'll juggle all this complexity so your team doesn't have to. That's the job.
At Slack, I watched our most effective engineering manager run sprints like a master chef runs a kitchen. Monday stand-ups focused solely on the week ahead. No mention of next quarter's reorg, no discussion of the competitive landscape. Just: here's what we're shipping, here's why it matters, here's who owns what. Strategic context came in monthly one-on-ones, tailored to each person's role and growth trajectory. Roadmap changes were shared in digestible phases, timed to when teams could act and reflect.
The result? Her team shipped more, stressed less, and stayed more engaged than any other. They weren't sheltered from complexity but protected from premature complexity.
But here's the nuance: This isn't about keeping secrets or playing power games with information. It's about recognizing that trust is built through reliability, not data dumps. When you consistently share what matters when it matters, teams trust you more, not less. They know you're filtering for signal, not hiding the noise.
With senior team members, progressive disclosure looks different. They need strategic context earlier, the "why" behind the "what," just not every possible "why" all at once. A staff engineer needs to understand architectural decisions that might land in six months. A junior engineer needs to understand this sprint's technical approach. Both get what they need to be successful, neither gets overwhelmed with irrelevance.
The single difference between the most junior to most senior level in every job function is their ability to handle ambiguity. Your audience matters.
So how do you actually do this? How do you move from theory to practice without becoming the very information gatekeeper you're trying not to be? The key is having clear principles for what to share when and sticking to them even when it feels easier to just dump everything on the table.
Making Progressive Disclosure Practical
Here's a simple framework for deciding what to share when:
Share NOW: What changes someone's work this week
Share SOON: What changes their work this quarter
Share LATER: What changes their role or career trajectory
And here are three techniques you can implement immediately:
1. "Now, Next, Later" Roadmaps Instead of showing the entire product roadmap, break it into three horizons. "Now" gets full detail — specs, dependencies, success metrics. "Next" gets rough scope and rationale. "Later" is just thematic direction. Update the buckets monthly, promoting items forward as they become relevant. Your team stays oriented without drowning in details that might change anyway.
It's important to do all three because sometimes the team won't be excited about the NOW (building internal tools to help other parts of the business) and more excited about the LATER (innovation that drives the long-term mission). By ignoring the LATER, you miss an opportunity to inspire them and keep them invested.
2. Just-in-Time Coaching Stop front-loading feedback. That annual review with seventeen development areas? Useless. Instead, deliver micro-feedback moments before it's needed. About to run their first design review? That's when you share facilitation tips. Leading a contentious stakeholder meeting? Quick prep on conflict navigation. Learning sticks when it's immediately applicable.
3. Staged Onboarding Paths New team members don't need to understand your entire tech stack on day one. Create learning paths that reveal complexity progressively. Week one: ship a small fix using basic tools. Week two: understand the service they're working on. Month two: explore adjacent systems. By month six: architectural decisions. Each stage builds on the last, creating confidence instead of overwhelm.
How do you know if you're getting it wrong?
Signs of under-sharing:
Repeated questions about the same topics
Surprise when changes land
Work that misses the mark on intent
Team members inventing their own context
Signs of over-sharing:
Analysis paralysis in team meetings
Low output despite high activity
Existential anxiety about future changes
Focus on tomorrow's problems over today's work
What about when they ask for more?
Sometimes team members will ask for information you haven't shared yet. Resist the urge to open the floodgates. Instead, probe: "What specific concern is driving this question?" Often, they don't need the whole answer — just reassurance about one particular angle. Give them the piece that addresses their actual worry, not the entire puzzle.
The Clarity Covenant
You return to that izakaya dinner, now seeing it differently. The best restaurants don't hand you an encyclopedia of every possible dish — they offer a thoughtfully curated menu. A great server reads the table, suggests what pairs well, knows when you're ready for the next course. They create an experience by revealing options progressively, matching the meal to your mood and appetite.
As managers, we make an implicit covenant with our teams: In exchange for their focus and effort, we'll provide clarity and direction. Not perfect information but perfect focus. Not every possible detail — exactly the right details at the right time.
This is harder than radical transparency. Anyone can forward every email, share every doc, invite everyone to every meeting. It takes judgment, empathy, and constant calibration to reveal complexity progressively. To know when someone's ready for more context. To resist the urge to overwhelm in the name of openness.
But when you get it right, something magical happens. Teams move faster because they're not paralyzed by possibilities. They make better decisions because they're focused on relevant constraints. They trust you more because you consistently deliver what they need to succeed — no more, no less.
Your job as a leader isn't to flood your team with information. It's to be their filter, their guide, their clarity creator. To ensure they always know the next right step without losing sight of the destination. To practice progressive disclosure not as a tactic, but as an act of respect for their cognitive bandwidth and current capacity.
After all, whether you're designing interfaces or leading teams, the principle remains: Don't show them everything at once. Show them what matters now. Because the best managers aren't encyclopedias — they're editors. And the best teams aren't informed about everything — they're clear on what matters.
That's what great management and great meals are all about.
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