Ever heard of the term “Dogfooding”? It is the inelegant industry term for a serious discipline:

Use the thing you built exactly the way your customer must use it.

No shortcuts because you understand the backend. No compensating with expertise. If it only works when explained, it does not work yet.

I did not decide to do this ‘just because’. I was stuck writing a LinkedIn post.

Earlier that same week I had just finished building a content repurposing flowchart and checklist for a group of clients.

This was part of the Stories to Scale initiative I’ve been running with nonprofits. The strategy was never the problem. They all knew what needed to happen: donors must understand impact, and communities must understand how to access services. The breakdown lived in execution. Small teams, limited time, and storytelling that depended on whoever happened to be free that week. This meant communication was irregular and reactive.

Naturally, they tried to solve it the logical way.

• More funding to hire a social media manager, despite how uncertain that funding would be.
• A dedicated content provider.
• More volunteers, generous with heart but constrained by time, which made consistency impossible.

In other words, they attempted to fix a structural problem with additional resources.

During clarity and sensemaking, what surfaced was different. The issue the way I saw it, was not the absence of people or a lack of funding; it was the absence of a pathway that translated one story into many usable outputs.

So the solution became a framework. Volunteers gather real stories, and the flowchart and checklist convert each one into social posts, short videos, case studies, blog entries, emails, and awareness campaign material.

Because the system is shared across three islands, one story strengthens multiple organizations instead of being used once and forgotten. A small collection of stories can realistically support an entire year of coordinated communication.

The gap was not closed by adding capacity. It was closed by understanding the problem well enough that the right structure could exist.

And there I was… opening LinkedIn and trying to invent posts from scratch.

Despite the fact that I publish a Strategic Alignment Journal entry every single day and then repost it to LinkedIn. The gap was embarrassing and useful. My strategy and my behaviour were not speaking to each other. I was operating outside my own framework.

So I put myself through my own process.

First came the fifteen-minute clarity conversation I normally guide clients through. The goal is never to solve the problem, only to stabilize the question. Within minutes it was obvious the issue was not “what should my LinkedIn posts look like.” The issue was inconsistency between my designed system and my moment-to-moment decisions.

Then I moved into sensemaking and ran my business through my Solo Professional Business MRI™. I already had my MCODE results, which meant I could see not just what I was doing but why I kept drifting away from the structure I built. The friction was cognitive load. My daily praxis asked for five dense pages of thinking before action, which quietly encouraged improvisation instead of repetition.

So I changed the system.

• Two pages.
• Clear daily actions.
• Nothing that competed with my existing habit of writing the blog and reposting it.

The moment the process became lighter than avoidance, execution returned.

My next step is to let preparation collide with reality, which I wrote about yesterday. Because alignment is not proven in planning. It is proven when behaviour continues under real conditions.

That entire adjustment came from eating my
own dog food.

Here is the broader lesson.

Dogfooding is not about testing quality at the end of delivery. It is about discovering where interpretation is required during use.

Every time a client has to decide what you meant, the service is unfinished.

So if you want to try this inside your own work, here is what it looks like in practice.

Imagine you run a fitness coaching service.

You would not review your workout program as the trainer. You would live it as the client.

1. You begin with your own intake. Do the questions actually help you understand what to do today or just describe who you are?
2. Follow the first week of workouts exactly as written. Notice where you substitute judgment because instructions assume prior knowledge.
3. Track nutrition using only the guidance you provide clients. Where do you guess? Where do you negotiate with the plan?
4. Experience the check-ins. Do they motivate action or simply collect data?
5. Then evaluate your progress using the same metrics clients see. Does it clarify direction or create anxiety?

Finally, refine the program so the next person needs less interpretation than you did.

Different industry. Same principle.

A service becomes trustworthy when the creator can move through it without translating it. Dogfooding closes the distance between intention and experience, and that distance is where most quality problems actually live.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

Where are you forcing your clients to finish the design for you, and what gaps would you trip over if you actually had to ‘eat your own dogfood’ without any internal workarounds?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, MCODE® Legacy Coach, writer and musician. I help leaders and independent professionals close the gap between strategy and execution by making invisible friction visible, so direction can finally translate into results.

If execution isn’t matching intent and you can’t quite see why, message me on WhatsApp. We’ll start with a brief Clarity Conversation to understand what you’re facing and decide together whether a focused Sensemaking Session is the right next step.