You hear your own argument coming back at you in someone else’s voice. A year ago, this was your case. It’s still well argued. You just no longer believe it.

You changed your mind. The people you convinced haven’t.

Adam Grant describes the three modes we slip into when a view gets challenged: we preach it, we prosecute the doubter, or we politick for the room. He suggests a fourth: think like a scientist, and hold opinions as hypotheses rather than possessions. The hard part isn’t intellectual. At some point an opinion stops being something you hold and becomes part of who you are, and then updating feels like losing.

Organizations raise the stakes. A position argued with confidence doesn’t stay yours; it travels. It gets built into plans, repeated in your absence, taught to people you’ve never met. Every public defense raises the price of a public update. The team learns which conclusions are settled and quietly stops testing them, and that quiet feels like confirmation. I have the odd privilege of watching the lag between when a leader stops believing something and when their organization finds out. It’s usually measured in quarters.

So run a small audit. Find your most-quoted opinion, the one that returns in other people’s slides. When did you last examine it, rather than defend it? Defending is automatic; examining has to be chosen.

Somewhere in your organization, work is moving on a belief you’ve left behind. Worth finding out where.