Promote as you build is the way to go (if you can). I'm posting my book online, article by article. That way you get real-time feedback as to what works at what doesn't.
I do think there are pitfalls to this though. There's a tendency to want to smooth over problems and mistakes and amplify successes, which also makes the story you are telling pretty boring and artificial.
Basically: Let me tell you a story of the time we tried to play golf. We went to the US Open and signed up with our fantastic team of engineers, it wasn't easy and our team had to work long hours to figure it out as we went but thanks to teamwork we struck hole in one every time. We're fantastic at golf, and the audience cheered for our amazing teamwork and leadership success, and Tiger Woods came forward from the crowd to shake our hands and was was very impressed with what we were doing in such short time.
Like this story had no downs, it's completely flat and omits any problems and greatly exaggerates the successes. It's also like not far off the median linkedin post about a project in progress.
It removes all the things that makes a story compelling. What were the problems? How were they overcome? What were the lessons learned?
The risk to this is that your competitors seize the opportunity to criticise your mistakes as if you're hiding them, even if you wrote about them yourself! As such, one justification for keeping problems secret is that your competitors don't know about them. It's unfortunate, as it stops a lot of good-faith collaboration, where strangers will come and offer support.
I do think there are pitfalls to this though. There's a tendency to want to smooth over problems and mistakes and amplify successes, which also makes the story you are telling pretty boring and artificial.
Basically: Let me tell you a story of the time we tried to play golf. We went to the US Open and signed up with our fantastic team of engineers, it wasn't easy and our team had to work long hours to figure it out as we went but thanks to teamwork we struck hole in one every time. We're fantastic at golf, and the audience cheered for our amazing teamwork and leadership success, and Tiger Woods came forward from the crowd to shake our hands and was was very impressed with what we were doing in such short time.
Like this story had no downs, it's completely flat and omits any problems and greatly exaggerates the successes. It's also like not far off the median linkedin post about a project in progress.
It removes all the things that makes a story compelling. What were the problems? How were they overcome? What were the lessons learned?