Leadership coach · Marchetti Advisory · 2 posts/week · next call Jul 24
The promotion that ruins great operators
Promotions are the most mismanaged transition in tech. Here's the framework I walk every newly promoted manager through: the three stages of role grief. Stage 1, loss. The best IC becomes a manager and quietly buries the job they loved — the craft, the confidence, the daily proof they were good at something. Stage 2, displacement. That grief goes underground and resurfaces as micromanaging, imposter feelings, or a quiet exit back to IC work eighteen months later. Stage 3, integration. The ones who make it are the ones whose organization named the loss out loud. If you promoted your best operator this year, don't just celebrate. Tell them missing the old work is not failing at the new one. Name the grief, and you get a manager. Skip it, and you get a very expensive identity crisis.
Feedback that survives the weekend
"Be more strategic" is not feedback. It's a horoscope. Real feedback survives the weekend: on Monday, the person can do something differently because of what you said on Friday. The test I give executives: after your next feedback conversation, ask the person to email you what they're going to change. If the email could have been written before your conversation, you didn't give feedback. You gave adjectives.
Offsites don't fix operating systems
A two-day offsite cannot repair what your Monday meeting breaks fifty times a year. Teams don't have trust problems. They have evidence problems. Trust is just the running total of small kept commitments — and your weekly operating rhythm is where commitments are made and dropped. Fix the Monday meeting. Skip the ropes course.
The silent exec in the room
The most senior person in the room speaks last, or the room learns to speak like them. I sat in on a leadership meeting last week where the CEO opened with his view "just to frame things." Forty minutes later, every single proposal on the table was a variation of his framing. Nobody was being weak. They were being efficient. Arguing with the frame costs social capital; decorating it earns it. If you lead the meeting: state the question, not your answer. You'll hear what your team actually thinks exactly once — before they know what you think.
