I remember the first time I made an important decision at work. It was defining a metric a sales team would be using, and I didn't even realize I'd done it until it had already happened.
It was bizarre. I'd always thought people should be listening to what I thought and taking my advice, but this felt very abrupt. They were just going to take my word for it? Wasn't someone going to check my work? What if I was wrong?
This was the first time that I felt like there might be real consequences to me being wrong, and it intimidated me. The fact that people WOULD just take my word for it meant I had responsibility to not say things lightly.
Mercifully, nothing went wrong with that first sales team metric, but I've since had my stats and visualizations taken out of context, misused, backfire on someone... Some have even taken on lives of their own, existing in spite of being wrong and being tough to correct or quash.
I'd say it's made me cautious, but it's probably more accurate to say that it's made me deliberate. Being given the chance to make an impact also means you have a chance to make negative impact, and making sure that risk is worth the reward is a part of the game.
