Purity is something that cannot be attained except by piling effort upon effort.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Seven tips to help you succeed when presenting to executives

• 😬 — Presenting to executives is high-stakes; success makes a positive impression, while stumbling can create a negative one.
• ⏱️ — Executives are a demanding audience, often short on time and focused on strategic issues, execution, and improvement.
• ❓ — Common anxieties include being judged, reading the room, knowing the right level of detail, understanding executive priorities, and fearing unanswerable questions.
• 🤝 — Align closely with your sponsor and learn as much as possible about your specific audience's focus and recent experiences.
• 🗺️ — Design a “laser-focused” message with core points and supporting evidence, practicing for crisp delivery and easier question handling.
• 💪 — Project confidence backed by authenticity; executives are attuned to this and want to connect with the “real you.”
• 💡 — Use passion appropriately (not “over-the-top”) and consider visual aids (like drawing a picture) to simplify complex ideas or defuse tension.
• 🧘 — Develop a “cognitive circuit breaker” or internal strategy to remain calm and rational during challenging or confrontational moments.

How do I make remote work less lonely?

• 😟 — Remote work can exacerbate loneliness, especially if your job was your main source of social connection.
• 🚫 — The author argues you shouldn't rely solely on your job for mental wellness and social needs; it's an unsustainable expectation.
• 🛠️ — Remote work forces you to build a new skill: actively cultivating relationships outside of work, which requires conscious effort.
• ✨ — The upside of this effort is the ability to build deeper, more chosen relationships compared to proximity-based work friendships.
• 🚶‍♀️ — Practical tips include integrating social connection into your day (e.g., “new commute” activities), engaging locally, reconnecting with old friends, and seeking out new experiences or communities.
• 🌱 — It's about “cultivating relationships you choose rather than fall into.”

Remote teams and common goals

• 🎯 — Teamwork centers on achieving common goals, which is more challenging for remote teams due to separation and varied information flow.
• ⚖️ — The article distinguishes between two types of goals: “Results Goals” (the big picture outcome, e.g., “what needs to happen”) and “Process Goals” (the steps and methods, e.g., “how it gets done”).
• 🛣️ — While Results Goals define the destination, Process Goals are crucial for remote teams as they set intermediate milestones, check-ins, and communication rhythms.
• 🤝 — Focusing on Process Goals allows leaders to monitor progress and provide support without resorting to micromanagement, as expectations for tracking and reporting are agreed upon.
• 🔧 — Defining both the “what” (Results) and the “how” (Process) helps remote teams stay aligned, catch issues early, and empowers individuals while ensuring overall objectives are met.

Adhocracies and Bureaucracies

• 🏢 — The article contrasts rapid-growth tech companies (“adhocracies”) which prioritize speed and independence, with large enterprises (“bureaucracies”) characterized by rigidity and centralized rules.
• 👻 — Rapid-growth companies, in their quest to avoid explicit bureaucracy, often develop an accumulation of “implicit bureaucracy” — unspoken constraints and norms that make getting things done difficult.
• 🔄 — This implicit bureaucracy can lead to a negative cycle of leader paranoia, reluctance to address issues openly, process “whack-a-mole,” blaming individuals, and potential organizational collapse or forced top-down control.
• 🧬 — Drawing on Westrum's organizational typologies, the author notes that companies can have a mix of cultures (pathological, bureaucratic, generative), and some “closer to the sun” leadership cultures might lean pathological while avoiding the bureaucratic stage.
• 🏗️ — The author argues that not all process is bad; “lightweight working agreements” or temporary scaffolding can be valuable for ambitious goals and cross-group collaboration, contrasting with the Silicon Valley bias against “process is evil.”
• 📊 — A commenter adds that “explicit bureaucracy” (codified processes) can be viewed neutrally as a tool for scaling, predictability, transparency, and transitioning work from the “Complicated” to “Simple/Obvious” domain.
• 🚂 — Transforming a large enterprise (descale/de-couple) is fundamentally different from managing complexity in a scaling startup (fixing a speeding train).

Tying Engineering Metrics to Business Metrics

• 🔗 — Engineering metrics should be clearly tied to business goals to demonstrate their value beyond the technical realm.
• 📈 — Key business metrics like ARR, NRR, GRR, and CAC are lagging indicators of overall business health.
• ⏱️ — Engineering metrics can be categorized as either lagging (like uptime, incidents, support tickets — earlier indicators than business metrics) or leading (like deployment frequency, lead time for change — real-time process indicators).
• 😊 — Intermediate outcomes like customer satisfaction, product usability, and system reliability connect engineering efforts to business results like customer retention (GRR/NRR).
• ⚙️ — Improving leading engineering metrics (e.g., reducing lead time for changes) positively impacts lagging engineering metrics (e.g., faster incident recovery) which in turn drives positive intermediate outcomes (e.g., less customer frustration) and ultimately improves lagging business metrics (e.g., higher GRR, ARR).

Networking For People Who Don't Network

• 💪 — Networking is like working out; consistent, relatively small effort yields significant long-term benefits.
• 🎲 — It's a probabilistic numbers game; don't put too much pressure on any single interaction, just meet more people.
• 🤝 — Your most valuable and accessible network is your coworkers; be competent, a good teammate, friendly, and avoid bonding over shared grievances.
• 🗓️ — Actively meet people outside of work in ways that suit your preferences, being yourself and concise about your background.
• 🌱 — Nurture connections by reaching out whenever someone comes to mind and meeting in person semi-regularly based on relationship depth.
• 🤗 — Share some personal details to build rapport and trust; people appreciate being remembered and tend to like those they know better.
• 😬 — Avoid “weird” networking behaviors akin to awkward dating, such as asking for mentorship too soon or mishandling social norms.
• ✨ — Effective networking leads to working with better people, at potentially better companies, improving your overall work life.

That’s all for this week’s edition

I hope you liked it, and you’ve learned something — if you did, don’t forget to give a thumbs-up, add your thoughts as comments, and share this issue with your friends and network.

See you all next week 👋