Go First, Get Nothing Back: When Good Strategy Meets Poor Systems
Mirror reciprocation works with people. Bureaucracies aren't people.
You prep the deck. The VP no-shows. Three meetings in a row. You send the follow-up anyway. She doesn’t read it.
As product managers and leaders, we’ve all felt that drain, putting in more effort than we get back until the exchange feels completely one-sided.
Peter Kaufman calls this mirror reciprocation. You go first, give value, and the other person reciprocates. What you put out is what you get back. Kaufman argues the obstacle is loss aversion; we’re so afraid of a 2% chance of looking foolish that we forfeit the 98% upside. Go all in with kindness, trust, and respect, and the world reciprocates in kind. This is how we build relationships, rapport, and reputation.
But mirrored reciprocation assumes the other party can reciprocate. What happens when you go first, stay positive, stay constant, and the system structurally can’t mirror it back? Not because individuals are bad, but because the organizational structure absorbs your energy without returning it.
Bureaucracies aren’t individuals. They don’t feel kindness, gratitude, or respect. At the org level, this shows up as metrics that reward compliance, rotating stakeholders who inherit none of the relationship capital you spent months building, and approval chains where no single person owns the outcome.
At the individual level, it shows up as disconnection and burnout.
Here’s what worked for me:
Recognize the pattern. Look for signs you are in an energy-absorbing system. Meetings get rescheduled, then cancelled, with no outcome. Your product idea gets interest, but no commitment or funding. Ask yourself: how long do I keep going first? If the answer is ‘too long’, that’s data. It doesn’t mean that you quit; it means that you pause and recalibrate where you spend your energy.
Redirect to where reciprocation exists. Invest at the team level, build culture, processes, and tools that make daily work easier. Gently bend the rules of how you plan and deliver, instead of grinding against them. Don’t ask for commitment; create the options. Instead of ‘can you give me availability to meet?’, try ‘here are three windows that work, which one works better?’.
Find the reciprocating pockets. Individual allies you can share learnings with. Skip-level sponsors willing to mentor. Cross-functional peers who become your soundboard. Start by noticing who responds to your ideas and then ask, who among them can move things, not just commiserate? You need both.
Extract from asymmetric returns. The org may never reciprocate. What did you learn from this experience, regardless of the outcome? Document it. Lessons from hard systems are portable for whatever comes next, whether it’s a new role, a new approach, or a breakthrough where you are.
Build skills that stay with you. Don’t just extract from the past - invest in the future. Build capabilities that compound regardless of where you work, like building with AI tools or learning to navigate ambiguity. No one can take your growth.
The question isn’t whether to believe in mirror reciprocation. It’s whether the system you’re in deserves it, and where else that energy might actually pay back. And maybe there is another question: what if you changed how you lead, and the system started to shift with you? That is harder. But it is also where transformation begins.