Executive translation.

One of my most unexpectedly controversial posts is Extract the Kernel, which argues that executives are generally directionally correct but specifically wrong, and it’s your job to understand the overarching direction without getting distracted by the narrow errors in their idea.

Some executives are skeptical of this idea because they don’t like the implication that they’re usually wrong, but they weren’t the audience that was offended. But the folks who got particularly upset were non-executives who felt it was unfair for them to have to debug the executives’ communication. The fair solution, some argued, is for the executives to become better communicators rather than requiring others around them to become better listeners. For what it’s worth, I agree with them, that would be more fair, but I’ve always found it much more productive to focus on how I can improve my approach than to document ways that others could improve theirs.

Recently I’ve been repeating a similar idea to “Extract the kernel”, but rather than focusing on understanding executives, it’s instead focused on leading change when working with executives. Often you’ll hear an executive say something that you disagree with, and in that moment you have to determine whether you can directly steer the executive towards a better decision. If you can, then do that! If you can’t, then focus on translating the executive’s idea into something useful!

Many high-agency managers try to prevent executives from doing silly things, but it’s almost always more effective to translate their energy for a silly thing into energy for a useful thing. It also leaves the executive feeling supported by your work rather than viewing you as an obstacle to their progress.

Some examples:

• Executive is obsessed with adopting LLMs in your product. Translate that into a useful approach rather than fighting that LLMs aren’t useful in most products.
• Executive wants to expand into a new business unit without any additional hiring. Use a hackathon to get a sample concept that you can use to validate the business with users.
• Executive wants to do a giant rewrite of your product. Translate into a narrow test rewrite of a small feature to support quickly refining the approach.

In each of these cases, the executive’s idea is more likely to succeed based on your actions. The idea is also more likely to fail quickly. In both cases, you’ll have worked to support the executive and the company in a thoughtful, effective way. (These are all good examples of making effective multi-dimensional tradeoffs!)