14 Jul Episode 030 – You Wrote the Exit Criteria. You Never Aimed at Them.
SummaryChris set a revenue target that would let him stop taking industrial engineering work and move to coaching full time. Three years later the criteria...
07 Jul Episode 029 – The Correction Worked in the Room. It Never Left the Room.
SummaryA junior engineer looked right on paper and, once he was pressure tested in a lead role, revealed a values gap that no hire pre-mortem...
01 Jul Episode 028 – His Complaint Was the Tell. I Read It as Alignment.
SummaryA senior engineer’s complaints about his previous employer sounded like a values match. Chris hired him. Fifteen months later, the same standard operating procedures that...
23 Jun Episode 027 – You Pre-Mortem the Project. You Don’t Pre-Mortem the Contract
SummaryEngineers run pre-mortems on technical systems without thinking about it. Before a critical install you walk the failure modes, name what could break, and put...
16 Jun Episode 026 – 3 Signs You Never Renamed the Relationship With Your Former Peer
SummaryGetting promoted over a former peer is a structural event. The relationship isn’t. When the structural authority shifts and the relational contract doesn’t get updated,...
09 Jun Episode 025 – You Delegated the Work and Kept the Part That Mattered
SummaryDelegated work doesn’t bounce back because the person failed. It bounces because you handed over the easy part and kept the part that mattered. Most...
02 Jun Episode 024 – Engineering Judgment Isn’t Innate. It’s Built From Three Inputs.
SummaryEngineering judgment isn’t a special category. It’s good judgment applied to engineering decisions, folded together with technical knowledge, lived experience, and consideration of who builds,...
26 May Episode 023 – The Day One Mistake: Why Promoted Engineers Confuse What Was Given with What Has to Be Earned
SummaryThe gap between a title and earned credibility is real on day one, and engineers handle it in one of two ways: they assert their...
19 May Episode 022 – Someone’s Running a Model of You
SummaryEngineers think they have a communication problem. They have a system problem. Every individual communication failure compounds into a predictive model that other people run...
15 May The Skill High Performers Lose First: Doing Things for No Reason
Forest Gump taught me something about optimization that 25 years of engineering couldn't...