i saw a tweet a while back (will link it if i find it again) that the single most useful skill of any senior++ IC or engineering leader can be stated in simple terms:

In every conversation you're part of, create clarity and reduce chaos.

[thread]

i've been thinking about that for months, and trying to put it into practice, and you know what? I think it is actually working. i'm feeling more professionally challenged and learning to measure my impact in things other than lines of code. chaos reduction, in practice:

1. the art of the rollup

let's say your team uncovers a previously unknown complexity in the thing you're building. oh no! people start weighing in, problem-solution ID drifts all over the map, and oh god now the CTO is involved, how did this escalate

what can you do?

enter what i've been mentally noting as "the art of the rollup". read the backscroll, take a deep breath, wait 5 mins, and write to entire channel:

"To summarize: the problem is X. Possible paths forward are A, B, C. Sounds like we're leaning towards A. have I missed anything?"

i could end this entire thread here honestly. learning to do the "rollup" post is liquid gold. no one, NO ONE, wants to sift through a 90-msg long thread. if you've grossly misrepresented, someone will tell you, and you try again. the rollup becomes canon, and your name is on it

2. pay very close attention to scope expansion, and gently call this out

if you put more things into play, almost by the laws of physics, chaos and entropy will naturally increase. when things feel uncertain, odds are there are too many things in play. take players off the field

gentle-sounding phrases you can deploy for this:

"hmm that's a really interesting idea. maybe we can visit it after the first milestone?"

"let's limit this chat today to what we know we have to achieve, to be respectful of everyone's time"

"drop that into our team slack!"

3. have meta-chats about who will contribute to a decision, and how

this sounds obvi in retrospect, but not everyone needs to be in every meeting. at this stage in the pandemic, ppl are pretty good at self-selecting out (zoom fatigue, etc) but

i find it helpful to ask ppl explicitly:

"we're gonna chat about X and try to decide Y. do you want me to make sure i mention anything on your behalf?"

"do you want me to update you with the outcome?"

"do you want to be involved, should i look at your gcal for scheduling?"

there are group decision-making models that have been written about length, but my personal categories, from most to least involved, are:

- let me have input
- you can proxy for me
- keep me updated
- only ping me if there's a fire

being clear about this will save chaos!!

other misc behaviors that i think are good for clarity-building:

- agree on a canonical place to record decisions, and actually record decisions there
- always recap spoken agreements in a written place
- less is more. don't overly self-edit, but short = more likely to be read