[HN Gopher] One-on-ones with executives
___________________________________________________________________
One-on-ones with executives
Author : kiyanwang
Score : 130 points
Date : 2022-09-12 06:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lethain.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lethain.com)
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Try to figure out why the meeting is happening before you're in
| the meeting. It's much easier to prepare if you understand why
| it's happening.
|
| As a general rule for Executives, whenever you want to talk to
| ICs even if Senior ICs, _always_ provide a one-liner on the
| topic.
|
| So many times I had the secretive email or IM from VPs or CTOs
| "Can we talk? When is a good time for you?".
|
| Often they have an agenda in their heads but not expanding on it
| is anxiety inducing for someone working under you in the
| hierarchy.
|
| It's similar to that rule of thumb that you don't joke about
| firing someone if they are your direct reports (or even if they
| are not really).
| seanc wrote:
| One small point on which I'm sure the author would agree is that
| an executive meeting can shift around between the three.
| Especially a pre-scheduled skip-level.
|
| It can start with some Mentoring, the executive might hear
| something interesting and do some Fact Finding, and then become
| concerned enough to do some amount of Loyalty Check.
|
| IME, this rule is the one that will keep you grounded through
| such an experience: "Also try to be kind: my rule in this
| situations is to always assume what I say will be inadvertently
| shared with the person who it's about."
|
| You might call it the Mercury rule; right next to Golden!
| omginternets wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is that a lot of colleagues don't know how
| to give good situation reports. One common error, especially
| amongst engineers, is to start from first observations and work
| towards a conclusion. This is exactly how one should think about
| technical problems, but it's not a very effective way of
| communicating, especially when you're trying to relay information
| up a chain of command.
|
| Here's how I learned to give a situation report during my brief
| stint in the armed forces:
|
| 1. "I am" (identify yourself & other parties involved; give
| location where appilcable)
|
| 2. "I see" (What is on your radar? What's the problem? What
| situation is developing? Which milestone have you reached?)
|
| 3. "I'm doing" (How are you responding to what you see?)
|
| 4. "I want" (How can your interlocutor help? What resources do
| you need?)
|
| The mnemonic for this is rather funny: "I'm lost. I can't see
| shit. I'm doing fuck all. I want to go home."
|
| I think it works rather well in civilian life, too: "I'm working
| on $FEATURE. I'm noticing that page load times have doubled. I'm
| caching the results to try to reduce that a bit. Could Bob have a
| look at the database indexes?"
| theptip wrote:
| Summarizing up-front is hard because it works the opposite of
| how many peoples' brain works; if you don't have a summary
| drafted, one good way is to run through everything verbally and
| then summarize at the end. This also plays into the natural
| narrative-creating tendencies.
|
| So it's good to recognize that this is a cognitive habit and it
| might require practicing a different approach, or preparation.
|
| Another military term I've heard for written comms is "Bottom
| Line Up Front" (BLUF) which translates to a proactive TLDR.
| Similarly, this is a very useful tool for helping people
| consume your written comms; it allows readers to figure out if
| the content is something they need to deeply engage with or
| skim, rather than forcing them to skim the whole thing to
| figure that out for themselves.
|
| The common theme here is that there is lots of value in
| providing a concise summary, so that recipients have to do the
| minimum amount of work to extract the first level of detail of
| information. This allows the first level of detail to travel
| further in the org and means the org is going to be better
| equipped to make good decisions.
| omginternets wrote:
| >Another military term I've heard for written comms is
| "Bottom Line Up Front" (BLUF)
|
| Yup! I've also heard this phrased as "start with the
| punchline, then explain the joke".
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| It works fine for written communication. In case of a long
| email, write a tl;dr and cut-paste it to the very top. That's
| what I do.
| JohnFen wrote:
| 100% this.
|
| And if your email includes an ask of any sort from the
| recipient, be sure to make the ask in the very first line
| (and summarize it in the subject line).
|
| Then spend the rest of the email with the details around
| the ask.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Saw this an hour ago, just used it with my skip-level, worked
| well. +1 lol
| omginternets wrote:
| I'm so glad to hear it! Enjoy your new powers! :)
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Agree. But in my experience, you have to bring the
| ask/need/most important detail to the first line.
|
| 1. Greeting, of course 2. The ask or most important detail,
| standing on its own line. (The exec can rapidly say yes or
| offer feedback if they agree on the face of it, or read on for
| more detail.) 3. Then do the I see, I'm doing, I want, etc in
| more detail.
|
| I think execs managing a tremendous workload appreciate if you
| can invert to this "thesis first before anything else" style--
| it took me a while to learn this, and I also appreciate it when
| partner teams who send stuff to me for review follow this
| style. I think boils down to time management, triage, and
| giving rapid yes/nos, but you still need to show your work, but
| if you make your email harder to action it'll get delayed in
| processing or even forgotten.
|
| Of course, relationship management matters too.
| [deleted]
| JStanton617 wrote:
| I was taught basically this same method as the "Princess Bride"
| plan:
|
| Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya (who I am)
|
| You killed my father (why I'm reaching out)
|
| Prepare to die (my ask / expectation)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Nobody cares who you are. The better approach is:
|
| 1. prepare to die (gets their attention)
|
| 2. because you killed my father (explanation)
|
| 3. I am Inigo Montoya (background info)
|
| Beware of things that "work" in movies. I've been led astray
| by that too many times.
|
| BTW, ever wonder why movies start out with an action sequence
| that often has little to do with the rest of the movie? It's
| to get your attention. Let's face it, you and I watch the
| first couple minutes of a movie to decide if we want to
| invest more time in it or click to the next Netflix movie.
| (Do we care who the director is? Nope.)
|
| Much in life works the same way.
| omginternets wrote:
| I think you may be missing the point. It's a mnemonic, not
| a rationale.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Mnemonics almost always imply an order. My point is the
| order is backwards, even though people naturally assume
| that the first step is introducing oneself. They
| naturally assume that their name is the most important
| thing because it is the most important thing to them.
|
| But for other people, one's name is the _least_ important
| thing, because of course what it most important to them
| is what _affects_ them.
|
| Once one realizes this principle, you'll see it in action
| everywhere.
| omginternets wrote:
| Who is involved in what tends to be very high on the list
| of important parameters.
|
| To your point, though, you'd of course tailor this to
| your audience. For example: you might say "marketing" or
| "the engineering team" instead of "Tom, Dick and Harry".
| bavila wrote:
| Agreed. I think your counterpart is too focused on the
| person's _name_ rather than the contextual _role_ that
| the person occupies.
|
| If someone is coming to me with a question, it is
| extremely helpful to know up front who they are (with
| respect to their role, not so much their name) in order
| to immediately start narrowing down the relevant
| contextual parameters that will be framing my
| understanding of their problem and my response. I don't
| want to read a wall of text while thinking of how to
| respond from an engineering perspective, only to discover
| at the end that the person lacks technical aptitude.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If you're a celebrity your audience has heard of, yes.
| Otherwise, no.
| omginternets wrote:
| Ha! This is very good.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| This seems like good advice. This is pretty close to the "STAR"
| framework I've seen used(Situation, Task, Action, Result) -
| explain the context briefly, what you're doing, what you're
| doing to accomplish the thing you're trying to do, and what the
| end result of it all is.
|
| > a lot of colleagues don't know how to give good situation
| reports.
|
| Another thing that can help, both written and in face-to-face
| communication, is using the Inverted Pyramid. Let's say the
| person in your 1-1 has an emergency and you have to cut it
| short after 5 minutes. In those first 5 minutes you want to get
| the most important information across. In the next 10 minutes,
| you give supporting details, and in the final 15 you can geek-
| out on the nitty-gritty.
| routerl wrote:
| I like the analogy of math proofs. It isn't an account of the
| discovery process; no reader of a math journal is after an
| account of the author's inspiration and thought process, save
| that for your bio. The proof is the finished product of all
| that work.
|
| Execs only care about the proof. They're not asking out of
| curiosity.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Now do an OPORD brief
| yardie wrote:
| I volunteer as a CERT (community emergency responder, green
| helmets) and this is how we're trained to relay information to
| the incident commander. It's been eye opening to see how much
| you can do with just a weekend of training. And how it fits
| into everyday life.
| msaharia wrote:
| Would you tell us more how that training translates in
| business/management? Are there good training materials we
| could look at online?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've been through hundreds of one-on-ones, and I hate them to
| this day. They're the sort of meeting I dread the most.
|
| Mostly because I never know what the the executive is wanting to
| get out of the meeting, and have never figured out how to find
| that out.
| rr888 wrote:
| Ask? If you dont know what the meeting agenda is, its a waste
| of time. If they're not sure tell them what you want out of it.
| If you really dont care about anything like career progression
| or finding out about the organization I'm sure the manager
| would be glad to stop having one, but its your chance to shine
| and/or find out what you want.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've asked. The answers are always vague. I don't know what I
| want out of it. If I want something, I'll have already
| reached out anyway, so it seems to me that the meeting is
| really for them.
|
| > its your chance to shine and/or find out what you want.
|
| Except, of course, for all the other communication that
| happens!
| kradeelav wrote:
| This is an excellent article on the nuances of corporate politics
| without assigning judgement to it - it's simply the nature of the
| beast with corporate and has some very clear laws to it when
| viewed at the right angle.
|
| Nice one -- will look at some of the author's other posts. :)
| theptip wrote:
| If you haven't read Will Larson's writing before, congrats -
| you have just stumbled upon lots of great content! Not many
| people write content specifically targeted at the Senior->Staff
| transition.
|
| He has a book called Staff Engineer which is partly "best hits"
| from the blog and partly expanded material, which is a good
| place to start; I find it a bit more focused and well-ordered
| than the blog (which I also dig, to be clear).
| kradeelav wrote:
| Will absolutely look into the Staff Engineer book; personally
| prefer dead tree books to anything digital if there's the
| option. Thank you sincerely for giving me the heads up!
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| > Try to figure out why the meeting is happening before you're in
| the meeting.
|
| Any meeting invitation should make it clear what the meeting is
| for, so people can come properly prepared. And for group meetings
| (obviously not an executive 1-on-1), knowing the agenda might
| allow you to skip the meeting altogether instead of wasting your
| time.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Internal meeting culture at most tech companies is absolutely
| unhinged. I didn't _really_ notice this until I started my own
| company. Before that I was an executive at a startup, and
| having a day full of meetings was par for the course. Now that
| I run my own company I can say that 99.99% (maybe 100%) of
| internal meetings are unnecessary. I'm using the word
| unnecessary instead of useless as I think internal meetings can
| be productive, but in almost every case can be avoided.
| Instead, rely on internal communication and writing to discuss
| ideas. The feedback isn't immediate, but it doesn't have to be.
| Decisions can be made quickly without having a meeting. You
| just have to set your company up so that they don't rely on
| quick decision making.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I can say that 99.99% (maybe 100%) of internal meetings are
| unnecessary.
|
| Absolutely.
|
| And there's a corollary rule of thumb -- anything useful in
| the meeting will happen in the first 15 minutes. The rest is
| just time-wasting.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The author omits that these meetings are extremely dangerous for
| technical staff, and must be treated as such. The most likely
| outcome of such a meeting, if there is any, is negative.
|
| Most importantly, any information requested should be provided
| only after whatever slant is expected has been identified, and
| then only such as to confirm that slant.
|
| It helps to think of corporate management as direct analogs to
| communist party representatives. They cannot send you to the
| GULag, but they can fire you, and will, in a heartbeat.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah... I'll never have a 1-on-1 with an executive. Although I
| did supposedly win a team lunch with my company's CIO. Their
| admin has yet to set that up and it's been like 5 months, so I'm
| guessing that won't happen.
| sokoloff wrote:
| They've forgotten, but if you reach out to the admin to remind
| them, odds are _extremely high_ that they'll make it happen.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Oh, we've talked on a few occasions about it. We even settled
| the details of it.
|
| Frankly, I don't care. I don't see the benefit to the team
| eating lunch with the CIO. I'm not special. I won't get
| "discovered" or whatever.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| Maybe that attitude is why you haven't been "discovered" ;)
|
| Take the meeting, it'll be good for your career.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Nah, it doesn't matter. They only care about who puts in
| a ton of extra hours.
| sokoloff wrote:
| As an exec, I don't care in the least about hours. I do
| care about results and outcomes, of course, but if you
| achieve more for the company in 2 hours per week than
| what someone else does in 40, you are more valuable to
| the company.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My company is big on "engagement" and they measure that
| in extra hours.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Ugh. I think a lot of engineers could deliver more in 30
| well-focused hours while being well rested than those
| same engineers could do in 50 or 60 hours per week.
| IMTDb wrote:
| I am an exec at my company. I really do not care about
| the hours you put in. I care about the results that get
| out. Basically, I care about what you are able to
| EXECute. I will admit tho that it is easier to do more
| when working more, but the time is not what I measure.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My company is big on "engagement" and they measure that
| in extra hours.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Had a "recruiting" call with a CTO yesterday. Halfway through the
| call he tells me 1) they're not recruiting, and the position I
| applied to doesn't actually exist, 2) they're going to run out of
| money in 15 months, and 3) he "just likes to meet people in the
| industry" and maybe they'll open a position up. He didn't do
| anything to steer the conversation after that and it just ended
| awkwardly.
|
| I think people deify execs too much. A lot of the time they're
| just as clueless as the rest of us.
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| I think treating "execs" as a category upon which judgment can
| be passed is a mistake.
|
| Every company has different standards. Execs as a general
| population aren't genius or clueless. You have to get specific
| about the sub-group.
|
| For example, execs at Amazon are likely to be significantly
| above average in competence. Execs at a 6 month old startup
| might be anywhere across the spectrum, hard to know.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| 100%. Execs are people too. Some effective. Some not so much.
|
| That being said, I would use this article to understand 1-1s
| with effective execs.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| If a CTO at a company with only 15 months of runway is just
| doing random recruiting calls then rest assured they have
| little significance in the company, or the rest of the company
| has resigned to letting the business fail.
| anamexis wrote:
| Isn't it pretty normal to do recruiting with a 15 month
| runway?
|
| (Obviously, _not_ normal to do recruiting if there are no
| positions open)
| ryanSrich wrote:
| 15 months seems pretty dire imo. The CTO should probably be
| spending time figuring out what's going wrong. Recruiting
| with only 15 months of runway feels like they're trying to
| distract themselves from other fires. This is especially
| true given the other details provided (not actually hiring,
| no position).
| JackFr wrote:
| It depends on the industry and the level of the
| conversation. If you're in a specialized field in which
| as CTO you are not an expert, and you're speaking with a
| competitor or at least someone else in the field, a
| detailed interview can offer quite a bit of information.
| It can be used to validate your approach, your tech
| stack, etc...
|
| Of course typically when you play that game you don't
| actually admit that you're not hiring and you're running
| out of cash.
| anamexis wrote:
| 15 months seems pretty standard for an early stage
| startup.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Not in my experience, unless you're very close to raising
| your next round. 20-30 months is about what I'd expect
| from a Series seed company in between rounds. 15 months
| is essentially 1 year. It's going to take 6 months to
| raise more money from start to finish. That means your
| actual runway is closer to 9 months. Now of course, they
| could be excluding current and future revenue, which a
| lot of companies leave out from runway (rightfully so),
| but if not, 15 feels low.
|
| As things change during this recession, I could see many
| Seed stage companies pushing to operational break even.
| If you can keep your annual costs below $1m, and scale to
| $1m in ARR, you're going to be far better off than
| companies that have to raise to keep going. If you can
| grow and sustain the business for another 24-30 months,
| you'll avoid the game investors are playing now of "let's
| see how low we can get this valuation".
| greenail wrote:
| If you don't have a relationship with the executive you should
| ask for an agenda and clarity on the goal of the meeting. You
| should say "you need the context so that you can prepare and
| ensure a productive meeting". Even if there is a one or two
| sentence description you should ask for more info. This does two
| things, first it helps you prepare and 2nd if they don't provide
| an agenda you get some forewarning that something is going on.
| Worse case they say no, best case they see you habitually doing
| good prep work.
| endtime wrote:
| I disagree with this advice. At least in the US, I think it
| could easily be interpreted as anxious or rigid. Or even just
| make you seem too junior. Leaders need to be able to handle
| ambiguous meetings.
| greenail wrote:
| if you flip the script you'd never ask an exec you don't know
| for a meeting without giving context. This is common courtesy
| if you do it without seeming demanding.
|
| "Looking forward to our discussion. Can you give me a bit
| more context for the meeting and an agenda? This way I can be
| sure to have enough time to properly prepare. Thanks..."
|
| would you say no to that?
| staticautomatic wrote:
| This is a perfectly reasonable email to send, with the
| expectation that the EA may well ignore it.
| itronitron wrote:
| It would also be good to ask your manager for insight into
| the meeting since they may already know, and if not then
| they should be able to find out.
| groby_b wrote:
| No, but I'd likely say "I haven't met with you in several
| months, and I just would like to check in with you how
| things are going. What are your concerns, what makes you
| happy, what are we missing. This is intentionally freeform,
| with a focus on whatever is important to you".
|
| There won't be an agenda, because it predetermines possible
| outcomes.
|
| But it's probably worth considering that even skips for
| exec-level folks are usually quite senior and should be
| able to handle an ad-hoc conversation. It's not an approach
| I'd choose with more junior folks.
| eminence32 wrote:
| The hypothetical reply you gave is still useful, IMO.
| It's important to distinguish between "there is an
| agenda, but it hasn't been communicated" and "there's no
| agenda, just an open free-form conversation" cases.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think the "Loyalty Check" meeting, despite its name (and claim
| in the blog post), is a meeting that _should happen_ at well-run
| companies. There are few things worse for a company than for
| layers of mid-senior leaders to be not bought into key
| initiatives. Checking for /ensuring/reinforcing alignment with
| these key initiatives is one way how strong companies out-perform
| average or weak ones.
|
| Rename "Loyalty Check" to "Alignment Check", change nothing else
| about the meeting or intentions, and it's a positive thing for
| companies.
| seanc wrote:
| Hmmm, it seems to me that if an executive is reaching across
| the organization for that kind of thing, that's a bad sign. It
| means the executive doesn't trust their leadership team (in the
| case of a skip-level) or their peer organization (in the case
| of a dotted-line meeting).
|
| That said, bad signs don't always mean bad things; as the
| author indicated a "Loyalty check" can range from "Just wanted
| to check in on how things are going and hear some detailed
| updates straight from the folks at the coal-face" (very healthy
| and normal) to "So-and-so is getting ready to betray our entire
| organization and I want you to plug this anonymous USB key into
| their computer".
| wincy wrote:
| I got the attention of an exec at a meeting a few years ago
| when I asked about opportunities intra-office and wanted to
| apply to some positions at headquarters (I worked from a
| satellite office). This was pre-COVID and aside from the
| public conversation with the exec in the meeting with 200+
| people, I'd only hear from him via the chain of command.
|
| I got encouraged to apply to a few jobs at the main office
| and when I talked to managers there, everyone acted strange
| and uncomfortable about it and it was obvious nobody wanted
| someone working "remote" on their team. Eventually they said
| "oh we're not hiring for that position this year". Drastic
| way to keep remote people out.
|
| But the exec never heard from me or solicited feedback so he
| wouldn't have ever known this. So his initiative was dead in
| the water.
|
| This was when I was more junior. Today I'd just have shot him
| an email giving him a status report on my experience but in
| my experience a lot of "ground level" folks are terrified of
| interacting with execs 5 levels above them in the org.
|
| A follow up meeting with me would have definitely revealed
| what was going on and he could have taken some action.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Many execs lament junior employees being afraid of them. I
| bet you could have safely sent that email.
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| "Trust, but verify"
|
| If the executive is consistently reaching across the
| organization that's a bad thing. If they do it once in a
| while to ensure they have made good staffing decisions,
| that's a good thing.
| laserlight wrote:
| > Trust, but verify.
|
| I don't like that "but". It implies trust and verification
| are opposites. To the contrary, verification is there to
| ensure that trust is not hurt in case of a mistake,
| misunderstanding, or whatever. "Trust and verify" is much
| better.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Thank you for this. "Trust but verify" never made any
| sense to me at all. If you have to verify, then there is
| no trust.
|
| Ensuring that there hasn't been a misunderstanding makes
| a lot more sense. "Verify" is still a misleading word in
| that equation, though.
| firebird84 wrote:
| This is absolutely true. Checking if their reports are going to
| be impediments to their goals is critical for managers,
| especially if those goals were themselves aligned with THEIR
| managers. You don't want to assign significant responsibility
| to someone who might drag their feet on something.
| rcar wrote:
| Agreed. These meetings can certainly end up being as cynically
| founded as the version posed in the post, but they're often
| also useful opportunities for execs to make sure that
| communication of the ultimate intent that led to the proposed
| work has made it through to the folks who will be tasked with
| doing the work. Understanding the business goal of the work
| makes it much easier to accurately weigh the inevitable
| tradeoffs that come up in projects without needing to run
| everything all the way back up the chain.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| Yeah, the term "Loyalty Check" gives it a weird connotation.
| There are some executives that just want to hear "Yes" to their
| initiative, but, (1) the good ones don't, they prefer to hear
| corrective feedback late rather than not or all, and (2) if you
| offer corrective feedback and it isn't taken into
| consideration, it helps inform you about the kind of executive
| your working for. Loyalty should run both ways.
| [deleted]
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