Springsteen Returns: The Market Does Not Care About Your Roadmap
A small reminder about attention, timing and reality
May, 2026
Springsteen is a Border Collie, which means he combines high intelligence, unreasonable enthusiasm, and the quiet operational belief that everyone else in the household is underperforming.
This becomes especially clear around evening walk time.
If the walk has not commenced within what he considers the acceptable delivery window, he begins stakeholder engagement: eye contact, pacing, strategic sighing, toy placement, and eventually the sort of stare that suggests the roadmap has failed.
The interesting thing is that Springsteen is not especially moved by intent. He does not care that the walk was planned, that the household had competing priorities, or that the delivery team needed five minutes to get organised before mobilisation.
He responds to observable signals: shoes, keys, movement, tone and timing.
Which, unhelpfully, makes him a fairly good market analyst.
There is an exception, of course. If you are a technology company, some customers will analyse your roadmap with the seriousness of an intelligence briefing. Springsteen does something similar when someone picks up a cup of tea during evening-walk hour. To him, that is not a beverage. That is a signal.
But for most organisations, customers are not studying the roadmap. They are responding to what they can see, feel, use, resolve, buy, access or trust today.
They do not usually know what was discussed in the quarterly planning session, which initiative is in phase two, or that a dependency has been moved into the next release window.
And, in most cases, they do not care.
It is just reality doing what reality does.
A roadmap is comforting because it turns uncertainty into sequence. It gives leaders something structured to point at. It shows intent, ambition and order. Done well, it is useful. Necessary, even.
But the roadmap is not the customer experience, the employee experience or the market signal — it is a theory of movement. Reality is the feedback loop.
Springsteen understands this deeply, although I suspect he would describe it differently, possibly by placing a tennis ball on someone’s foot and maintaining unsettling eye contact.
His view is simple: if the signals suggest walk, then walk should happen. If the signals suggest movement, but no movement follows, confidence begins to fall. If the pattern repeats, escalation becomes reasonable.
In organisational life, the same thing happens more quietly.
A company announces a refreshed customer strategy, but the contact centre still cannot see the right information. A new digital channel launches, but customers still have to repeat themselves when they move to a person. A transformation program says the organisation is simplifying, while employees experience more tools, more meetings and more internal friction.
No one is necessarily being dishonest. The roadmap may be real, the intent may be good, and the sequencing may even make sense internally.
The roadmap explains what we meant to do. The market responds to what it can see.
That does not mean leaders should abandon roadmaps and chase every signal that moves. That would be exhausting. Springsteen would probably support it, but he is not the Chief Operating Officer.
The more useful reminder is smaller: leaders need to hold the roadmap lightly enough to notice when reality has started giving feedback.
Sometimes the signal is customer behaviour. Sometimes it is frontline stress, reputation moving faster than expected, adoption lagging behind a product everyone believed was ready, or a Border Collie standing in the hallway, making it abundantly clear that the current operating model lacks credibility.
The leadership work is not to throw away the plan every time the room changes; it is to notice when the room has changed. Because the market does not care that the roadmap was carefully considered. It cares what is landing.
And if what is landing does not match what was intended, the useful response is not to point harder at the roadmap. It is to read the signal, adjust the work, and keep moving.
Preferably before the Border Collie escalates.
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The Ripple Effect is written for leaders navigating AI, digital modernisation and organisational change inside complex organisations.
Practical judgement, useful observations and clearer ways to think through change.
With occasional help from Springsteen, my Border Collie, who reminds me that clarity often comes from movement 🐾.
Stuart Gonsal MAICD