Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech (By Herng Lee)

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Table of Contents (Links are Clickable)
What is Strategy & Operations in Tech?.............................................. 3
D is for: Demystify with Data................................................................................... 4
I is for: Inspire with Insights.................................................................................... 5
A is for: Amplify, Automate, or Accelerate............................................................. 10
L is for: Lobby with Love.........................................................................................12
S is for: Steer with Structure................................................................................... 14
What Skills Do They Look for in StratOps?........................................16
Structured Problem-Solving....................................................................................17
A Reminder on Structured Thinking................................................................. 21
Output Frameworks................................................................................................23
Exec-Ready Storytelling..........................................................................................32
Brevity is Gold....................................................................................................32
Why It's Critical to Build Good Headlines........................................................ 35
Why Using the Right Tone Matters...................................................................39
Don't Save the Best for Last.............................................................................. 40
Tailor Your Message to the Audience................................................................ 41
Put Things in Context........................................................................................ 42
Analytical Thinking.................................................................................................44
Causality.............................................................................................................44
Statistical Significance.......................................................................................46
…and Nailing the Basics......................................................................................... 49
How to Write Emails (That Won't Get Ignored)...............................................49
How to Run Effective Meetings......................................................................... 51
How to Make Group Meetings Better (and How to Skip Useless Ones).......... 53
Last, But Not Least….............................................................................................. 60
About the Author.................................................................................................... 60
© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 2

What is Strategy & Operations in Tech?
Here’s the first secret about the StratOps space: very few people who say they’re doing
business strategy are actually doing pure strategy. No one is hiding away in a secret
room and creating a groundbreaking roadmap from scratch.
Instead, more often than not, they are working to refine or land the organization’s
pre-defined strategy, and ensure it is effectively executed.
This is not a knock on the role; it also does not imply the job is easy by any means. But it
does mean that we need to have realistic expectations of how strategy teams actually add
value to an organization, especially since they're not the ones directly bringing in the
money.
While the scope of strategy and operations work at a large tech company can seem
idiosyncratic and boundless, it can often boil down to one thing: to help other people get
sh*t done.
There are many levels to this, of course – but you cannot be led too far astray if you stay
true to this mission statement.
OK, but what kind of work is it specifically?
Taking the liberty to oversimplify a bit: I think of the work in five buckets, via what I call
the DIALS framework below:
● Demystify with Data

● Inspire with Insights
● Accelerate with Autopilots
● Lobby with Love

● Steer with Structure
In the following section, we'll talk about what each bucket entails exactly, and how
Strategy & Operations (StratOps teams) deliver outcomes accordingly.
D is for: Demystify with Data
One of the most common ways to break into this field early on in your career is via the
route of data analytics.
Think about it: every org has that someone who is data-savvy and can get their hands
dirty to pull whatever numbers are needed to aid decision-making.
The job starts out relatively straightforward, which is to bring data to the table when
there is none. For instance:
● You might build dashboards to help sellers track revenue and product adoption
metrics
● You might set up factpacks on external market data for people to reference and
ensure there is a common source of truth
● You might query backend data and create visualizations to help validate or
disprove a hypothesis someone has
The nice thing in this bucket is that the value-add is often super clear: your stakeholders
were once blind, but now they see. For instance:
● They can now make claims based on facts instead of gut feel.
● They now have a better view of how their business is doing vs. how competitors
are trending.
● They can make decisions more confidently because of your support.

The list goes on. All in all, you have empowered other people to do their job better and
faster.
But here’s the watchout – putting data on the table alone does not justify its value. You
need to ask yourself (and whoever that is asking for your help):
“Is this data helping someone make a better decision (or change an
intended course of action)?”
Sometimes even the people asking for the data haven’t even thought through this
fundamental question. I've been in many instances where simply asking this question
resolves a data request on the spot, as the other person suddenly realizes that he/she
never intended to change their course of action based on the data.
In other words: there was no hypothesis to be tested; it was simply a good-to-have.
When there is a lack of direction, the presence of data does not help illuminate; it merely
obfuscates, and wastes people's time to boot. In these instances, you should feel more
than comfortable asking your requestor to talk you through what their next few steps
are, and how they envisage utilizing the data.
Those simple questions alone will allow you to filter out the noise and better prioritize
workstreams that exert impact.
Let’s now talk about insights.
I is for: Inspire with Insights

Data is just a set of numbers. Insight is a set of numbers with context. The ability to
differentiate this is usually the first inflection point that separates a data analyst from
what we consider a strategy analyst.

Put differently: a strategy analyst is someone who can demonstrate a higher order of
thinking by not only describing what the numbers are, but showing what the numbers
mean for the business.
Here's a couple examples to illustrate what this means.
[1] Data is raw and unprocessed. Insight is refined.
Here's an example: Let’s say the brief is to figure out the e-commerce market
opportunity by country.
The data analyst will build a long table that simply shows the relevant metrics for each
country, e.g. the total retail market size, e-commerce penetration, etc.
The strategy analyst, however, tries to segment the countries based on these metrics,
and develops a few archetypes of countries.
The strategy analyst's final output is more than just a data dump. Instead, it is an
insightful framework that immediately helps her audience start thinking about how the
go-to-market strategies will differ for each segment.
The illustration below shows the difference:

The data analyst provides data, but little else.
The strategy analyst takes the data a step further to generate hypotheses & recommendations.

[2] Data is descriptive. Insight tries to be predictive.
Imagine the team is trying to assess whether it makes sense to scale a new product
feature into a new market.
The data analyst will simply pull the stats for existing markets into a table. Then he's
done.
The strategy analyst, on the other hand, takes the initiative to look at things beyond
what she is told.
She might look at past product launches in these markets to uncover adoption patterns.
She might also look at the new market's comparability to the already-launched markets
(and if not, she considers what multiplier or discount factor to apply).
She ends up delivering an insightful AND forward-looking view that actually helps the
team make a decision.
An illustrative example is shown below:

The data analyst gathers and surfaces data, but makes no attempt to be forward-looking
The strategy analyst tries to predict (within reason)

Let's now move onto the next one.
A is for: Amplify, Automate, or Accelerate

Not everything in the StratOps world is about developing insights that immediately
uncover money-making or cost-saving opportunities (although it is pretty cool when it
happens).
The other less-heralded but no less important lever is helping people save time.
Anything that achieves this is worthy of time investment.
This can be achieved through a few ways:
● You can amplify and scale existing efforts so that other people can benefit.
● You can automate processes to save people time.
● Or you can accelerate execution velocity for the business by streamlining things
or deprioritizing low-value-adding tasks.
All these things will translate directly into giving people more time back to focus on
work that matters. Here are some common examples:
● Building automated dashboards to not only save people time, but also
prevent any potential communication tax arising from people using different
datasets.
● Building scalable materials that people can lift and shift easily. This could be
anything from go-to-market playbooks, client-facing product narratives, or
templates for internal business reviews. Challenging yourself to ensure scalability
for everything you’re working on is one of the best ways to create outsized value
as a strategy person.

● Streamlining things to minimize ineffective or duplicative efforts. This might
involve cutting down on ineffective meetings, or identifying opportunities to
bring people together in one single forum.
In addition, one of the more underrated things that fall into this category is the ability to
help your stakeholders communicate well.
This may sound trivial and not at all strategy-related, but I cannot overemphasize the
importance.
The need to sharpen communication skills (esp. on paper) is not reserved for internal
enablement teams only. Even frontline-facing folks spend a significant amount of their
time communicating internally.
But this area is not necessarily everybody’s forte. Over the years, I have seen a ton of
wasted effort and unnecessary churn as a result of non-strategy people struggling to
land their messages with internal executives and stakeholders.
As a strategy person, do not sell yourself short by underestimating the value you can
bring by helping your business partners sharpen their messaging.
For instance:
● Some people might need help with distilling complicated messages down to
exec-ready headlines.
● Some people might need help organizing and distilling their unstructured (yet
very insightful) thoughts.
● Some people might need help bringing disparate information sources together in
a digestible way.
You would be surprised at how doing these seemingly trivial things well can minimize
communication tax and create value.

So whatever it is, do what it takes to sharpen and amplify the voice of your business
partners. The business will move forward as a result.
Let's now talk about lobbying.
L is for: Lobby with Love

Strategy maestro Michael Porter says that the essence of strategy is choosing what
not to do.
This is a fantastic modus operandi to anchor on.
Every once in a while, I try to challenge myself and ask whether I’ve helped make a
difference recently by shifting the company’s time and resources towards what I think
are the right priorities – however slightly.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has also said before that his late mentor Bill Campbell
used to ask him the same question every time they met: “Are you breaking ties? What
ties did you break this week?”
Again, this illustrates the value of making intentional trade-offs and moving the
business forward.
But of course, not everybody in the org will agree on what those right trade-offs are.
Information asymmetry is inherent in a large org.
For instance, global teams are not always privy to regional idiosyncrasies, and
sometimes people on the ground see opportunities that senior executives don't.
This is when we as strategy people have the duty of helping the org see the light. You can
add tremendous value by helping decision-makers see the opportunity so that they will
invest, support, or sponsor accordingly.

And this is where lobbying with love comes in.
See, a large part of strategy work is to passionately advocate for the opportunities that
you see (provided that you actually believe in them), and influence the decision-makers
to push through your agenda.
While the term lobbying might take on a dubious connotation, that need not be the
case: if anything, it is a travesty to not lobby passionately for the right things for the
company.
Of course, this is by no means easy: the org is big and complex, resources are finite,
while competing voices are endless. But if you persevere and succeed, the payoffs can be
huge.
In fact, there have been weeks where all I do is drive internal lobbying efforts: for
instance, if I'm trying to advocate for continued headcount investment into select
markets where I see an opportunity, I need to invest time into putting together a
rigorous business case to ensure leadership takes a long-term view.
Another example: I might invest time into building a persuasive narrative so my

business partners can educate global product leadership on industry dynamics and show
how quickly competition is heating up, in order to accelerate a product roadmap.
The reader will notice that I specifically called out love as part of this pillar. This is
intentional.
Advocacy requires passion, but that passion cannot be misguided: you’ll find your fair
share of people in a company who ask for the world and promise grandeur, only to build
their own empires without delivering for the company.
Try your best to be a judicious steward for the company and avoid getting caught up in
these games.

What you want instead is a passion for the opportunity, for the users, and for the
customers. It is only then that you should give yourself permission to advocate as hard
as you want.
Let's now talk about the last pillar.
S is for: Steer with Structure

I’ve saved the most important (but probably the most boring) for last.
A well-functioning organization requires good governance, which is much more than

just carrying a big stick around and imposing endless review forums. There are many
questions to think through. For instance:
● What are the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) we want to drive as a team this
quarter and this year? How many is enough? How much flexibility do we want to
bake into these OKRs?
● How do we want to govern our OKRs? Is a quarterly review sufficient? Or do we

need monthly deep-dives with leadership to ensure we can spot any red flags
early on?
● How do we make sure there is scalability of best practices across our

markets, besides relying on organic sharing and goodwill? Do we need to create
another forum (or will that simply be another meeting on people’s calendar)?
● How do we engage cross-functional stakeholders effectively? Do we need to

set Joint OKRs with any of them (or is that just making life more difficult)?
Strategy people are often tasked to run these meetings or design these processes. The
idea is to make sure there are systems in place so that the wheels keep turning, the
light stays on, and nothing festers for too long before it gets caught by the spotlight.

Of course, not everyone enjoys this part of the work – this is truly when the job feels
more Operations than Strategy – but it is critical to running a rigorous business.
Let’s now talk about what it takes to thrive in the Strategy & Operations space.

What Skills Do They Look for in StratOps?
Strategists tend to be generalists. The good ones at Google move teams every few years,
and yet still find ways to ramp up quickly and become great at what they do.
Having worked with quite a few of these people, I made it my mission to learn from
them and enrich my own toolkit.
Meanwhile, as I became more senior over time, I also started interviewing prospective
candidates for strategy roles.
This was another inflection point for me, as it forced me to think intentionally about
what enabled someone to be successful in these roles, as well as how I would tease out
those traits in less than an hour.
Over time, I found myself looking for about half a dozen or so very specific things, across
the spectrum of soft skills and analytical prowess. These were also characteristics that I
saw again and again in my colleagues who were thriving at Google.
So without further ado, let's dive in.

Structured Problem-Solving
Structured thinking is often defined as the ability to break down a problem into smaller,
more manageable parts.
However, this is only half-correct.
Breaking things into smaller parts alone is necessary, but insufficient. The hard part is
ensuring that these smaller parts are actually enough to help you solve the problem
you’re facing.
💡 When you do this perfectly, you have achieved what’s called MECE: mutually
exclusive, collectively exhaustive.
This is essentially management consulting 101: it’s a useful framework to leverage to

ensure that you are not conflating hypotheses, AND that you are not omitting important
ones either.
And when you check both boxes, you can problem-solve confidently.
Mutually Exclusive (ME) is a bit easier to conceptualize and achieve: usually it’s
clear when your hypotheses or workstreams overlap with one another, which can make
it hard for you to draw meaningful conclusions and lead to duplicative efforts.
Here’s an illustration:

On the other hand, Collectively Exhaustive (CE) ensures that once you
systematically crack through your set of hypotheses, you most likely will have landed an
answer, as there is nothing else meaningful that can be at play:

To better illustrate, let’s take the following problem statement as an example:
"We built a new dashboard because our stakeholders said they needed it,
but it’s been two months and few people are using it. What should we do?"
When I interview potential candidates, questions like these serve as a good litmus test
and help me identify a candidate's ability to not only engage in structured thinking, but
also communicate accordingly as well.
I’ll share two extreme ends of the spectrum to illustrate this.
On the one hand, you have candidates who see questions like these as a lottery exercise;
they poke around, ask whatever questions that come to mind, generate lots of
hypotheses, and just try to get lucky.
In other words: They believe that I have a predetermined answer in mind, and they’re
trying to guess, rather than deduce. The below is an illustration of how these case
interviews tend to go:
There are lots of ideas (some good, some less so), but very little structure.

As we can see, the interviewee tries to problem-solve by rapid-firing questions, hoping
that some of them will inevitably land close to the bulls-eye, allowing the interviewee to
recalibrate and tack on follow-up questions.
But the issue with these case interview questions is that there is no bulls-eye to begin
with: the interviewer almost never has a “secret answer” in mind.
Instead, he is looking for a structured approach that can crack any case scenario: if you
venture a guess and it happened to be what the interviewer had in mind, he’ll just
change it on the spot, and simply ask you how you would validate or disprove your
hypothesis in real life.
And then you’re back to random guessing. Not good.
So instead, you want to land on the other side of the spectrum by making the MECE
principle your friend.
It always starts out simple:
OK, either people don’t know about this dashboard (and obviously wouldn’t
use it), or they know about it but aren’t using it (for some reason).
But if it’s the latter, then there are a few more possibilities. For instance:
Perhaps the data isn’t perceived as trustworthy, perhaps the dashboard is

hard to use, or perhaps…
You then generate another set of hypotheses through this forking exercise. Then you
fork again. Eventually, you might end up with something like this:

Just keep forking.
By this point, we can see how problem-solving becomes a rather straightforward

exercise: you just keep forking. Then it’s just a matter of prioritizing the most important
hypotheses, and figuring out how to validate (or disprove) them.
A Reminder on Structured Thinking
Structured thinking is hard, but coachable. Practice makes perfect. In fact, you can train
this muscle even outside of work. Try approaching any mundane issue in your life with
the MECE principle, and over time it will gradually become a natural reflex.
For instance: Imagine that you leave the office one day, stop by a restaurant to grab
dinner, and realize service is exceptionally slow on that day.
You have no idea why, but you use it as a chance to practice crafting an issue tree. You
tell yourself:

...OK, so a slowdown in service is either intentional or unintentional. 100%
MECE at this point.
OK, so if it’s intentional, could it be that:
● …the restaurant is trying to save on costs (e.g. the owner decided to cut down on
manpower)?
● …the restaurant is making its staff do more (e.g. waiters are now told to upsell
customers more, leading to longer waiting times)?
● …or something else?
And if it’s unintentional, then someone is causing the issue unknowingly. Could it be
that:
● The issue is with the restaurant staff: Perhaps there is new and inexperienced
staff, thus leading to service delays.
● The issue is with the kitchen: Perhaps something broke down in the kitchen
today; perhaps the cook is having a bad day.
● The issue is with the customers: Perhaps there were more customers than
expected today. Or perhaps Table 3 caused a scene and is demanding all their
orders be recooked.
There — you’ve just taken a mundane issue, and applied to it a simple yet rigorous
problem-solving framework.
Try doing this once a day, and you’ll find that the MECE principles naturally become a
reflex and can help you instill clarity into many situations easily.
Let’s now talk about the skills required to translate findings into digestible outputs.

Output Frameworks
Applying the right frameworks to analyze a problem is hard. But what’s even harder
sometimes is to find the right framework to present your findings, as a good
problem-solving framework does not always mean a good presentation framework.
And unfortunately, good thinking and hard work can go to waste if there isn’t a good
structure to help land the resulting insights with decision-makers.
The good news is this: while every problem is different, the 80/20 principle tends to
apply. Most of the time, you end up relying on the same set of mental models to organize
and present your case. Anything too complicated is hard to land with stakeholders
anyway.
Everyone is wired differently, of course, but here's my go-to model. I call it the
ONE-TWO-THREE principle:
Let's start with the first one.

[1] One equation to rule them all
Regardless of the complexity, most strategy projects are all in search of the same thing:
If this, then that.
The objective is almost always to establish what is essentially an input-output

equation, where we try to predict what we’ll get if we do (or don’t do) something.
Simple as that.
In other words, almost everything can be simplified down to something to the effect of:
If we do (or don't do) X, then Y will (or will not) happen. And here's why.
As a result, for any given strategy project, I always try to think about what my narrative
is saying in its simplest form: What is my X, and what is my Y? Everything else is just
supporting evidence.
As long as I can clearly articulate my “equation,” then I have much more confidence that
I can land my message with my audience.
Let's illustrate with an example.
Imagine that we’ve just finished a strategy project where we analyzed one of our
products, and developed a recommendation on where the Product team should invest
next. Now we need to figure out how to articulate our findings.
Well, what is the core of our narrative?
It is essentially trying to say something to the effect of: If you build features A & B (and
not D or E), we can then secure opportunity C (and here's why). Everything else is
auxiliary.
A good mental model of this narrative would be something like the following:

Most strategy work inevitably boils down to some form of "If this, then that."
This is the one equation (literally) that rules them all. Once this mental model is
established, everything else is just about ensuring the details and proof points have legs
to stand on.
The reason we try to do this is simple: your audience will be able to follow along more
easily, and you prevent your key messages from getting diluted by the potential
complexity of how you got there.
However, if this doesn't work: we have our second weapon: the two-by-two matrix.
[2] (Almost) everything can be explained by a 2x2
There are times when the input/output framework is not necessarily the most suitable
mental model.
For instance, when your recommendations come with trade-offs and/or are contingent
upon other factors – then the headlines become a little less clean.

But fret not: in these cases, instead of force-fitting into a simple input-output
framework, you might want to consider whether a two-by-two matrix can do the trick.
Let's illustrate with an example.
Imagine that the problem statement is to develop a project prioritization strategy

for the team.
Clearly there’s no silver bullet here: some things are important (but less urgent), while
some things are urgent (but less important). It is hard to articulate simple prescriptive
advice that also accounts for all the trade-offs.
However, one option is to consider leveraging something like the Eisenhower Matrix,
which does a good job at providing nuanced yet actionable guiding principles for
different scenarios:
Two-by-two matrices are a simple yet powerful tool that can help bring nuance into
conversations without overcomplicating things.

In fact, it's also a nifty input framework to support the problem-solving process. By
intentionally forcing yourself to anchor a complicated problem statement down to the
two most critical dimensions, you might be pleasantly surprised at the amount of clarity
you can bring to an issue.
Here’s another example.
Imagine that you're trying to reimagine how the company serves its customers,
and you need a good framework to summarize the proposed approach.
One clean way to communicate your strategy might be to use the following matrix to
segment your customers, and then talk about how you would differentiate your
go-to-market strategy accordingly:
The beauty of this framework is that you often really only need to tackle two quadrants:
after all, the jobs to be done for your "stars" (top right corner) and your "dogs" (bottom
left corner) are often no-brainers.

In this example, it's clear that the “invest” and “automate” quadrants are
straightforward to strategize against. Meanwhile, the “maintain” and “nurture”
quadrants are where you can introduce nuance into your strategy.
For instance, you might recommend that we start developing incentive programs for the
“maintain” quadrant, in order to squeeze more incremental growth out of
already-mature customers.
By contrast, for the "nurture" segment, you might recommend dedicated resources to
incubate those clients, and you might even design bespoke programs in order to unlock
their future potential.
Of course, maybe the right way to think about your strategy isn’t based on size and
growth, but rather other factors, such as competitive dynamics or product-market fit.
That’s totally OK.
The key is to ensure your most important guiding principles can be easily
communicated, and a 2x2 matrix is a useful tool to achieve that.
But what if you need more than two dimensions?
If you need to wield the power of a third dimension, nothing’s stopping you: for
instance, you can use bubble sizes, shapes, and/or colors to introduce further nuance as
you see fit.
But tread carefully and don’t go too crazy: most stakeholders simply cannot deal with
the complexity of anything beyond two dimensions, even if your logic is perfectly
reasonable. Better to keep it simple (or split things up), rather than have it backfire.
Now let's talk about #3.

[3] All good things come in threes.
There are two kinds of people in this world: people who think in sets of three, and
those who don’t.
For some reason, you’ll find that most good narratives tend to abide by the rule of three.
Sometimes it almost feels like a necessity: anything more than that feels like a laundry
list, and anything less might as well be communicated via a single, punchy headline.
The rule of three has another benefit when it comes to presentations: you have the
flexibility to go as deep or as shallow as the situation permits, without altering your
framework too much.
If all you have is five minutes, no problem: with some finessing, there’s no reason why
you shouldn’t be able to communicate the gist of your analysis with 3 strong bullet
points.
And if you have an hour, then great: you can double-click into each of your three pillars,
fork into supplementary details, and deliver a well-structured presentation backed by
strong evidence.
And for anything in between: simply tee up your three pillars, cut to the chase, and let
your audience decide which pillar or two they'd like to double-click into.
There are very few situations where a three-pillar framework fails to do the trick.
Now, just like how MECE principles can and should be practiced in daily life, I also
know people who make it an active reflex to compartmentalize their thoughts into sets
of three. The idea is to train until it becomes a natural muscle.
And I do think it helps. When I interview people, I can easily tell which candidates are
used to compartmentalizing their ideas in a structured manner, and which ones aren’t.
The ones who have this muscle tend to communicate their ideas better – even if they
don’t strictly adhere to three buckets.

Now, to be clear: organizing your thoughts into three buckets is a good start, but does
not automatically mean it will land well. There are suboptimal ways of organizing one’s
thoughts as well.
For instance, let’s go back to our earlier example where we proposed a set of
go-to-market strategies for our customer base.
What if we structured our executive summary in our presentation as follows:
● We expect to capture xx% more market share if we evolve our approach with
our superstar customers
● We’ll improve cost efficiency by yy% if we adopt a scaled approach for the
tail customers in our portfolio
● We need to set up a timeline and process to communicate the implications of
these changes to our sellers
These are all valid points, but clearly one is not like the other (hint: it's the last one).
The key to employing a three-pronged approach is to ensure each of your pillars works
hard enough on its own.
In this example, the first two headlines are sharp, strategic, and impactful; the third one
is tactical and none of those things. It is thus a poor example of a three-pillar approach.
Instead, it would be much more impactful if the third bullet point attempted to address
something of equal importance, e.g. the potential risks to this strategy (and any
mitigation mechanisms).
I do want to be clear, however, that I am not suggesting that we fixate on cookie-cutter

approaches and force-fit all problems into predetermined frameworks.
Rather, I am arguing that the simplicity and familiarity of such frameworks make it
much easier for our audience to follow along. But what works for me may not work for
you. And what works for you may not work for your stakeholders.

There are best practices, but there need not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Your
frameworks need to not only work for yourself, BUT also your audience as well.
So train this muscle. Even if you don't end up using these output frameworks in your
work, the attempt to apply such frameworks will help sharpen the thinking process as
well.
Let’s now talk about another critical skill: exec-ready storytelling.

Exec-Ready Storytelling
The bar for building exec-ready presentations is extremely high in the world of StratOps.
You need the uncanny ability to sift through complex and ambiguous circumstances,
and crystallize your point of view in a way that will resonate with decision-makers.
(In fact, I built a 50-page playbook to teach people how to build exec-ready slides. You
can get it for free here).
The science of building exec-ready presentations will require much more real estate, but
we will talk about some of the most critical guiding principles here.
Brevity is Gold.
One of my favorite quotes goes, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter
letter.“
This is the essence of brevity, and it should be your golden rule. It applies to everything:
not only the overall length of your presentation, but also all the way down to how sharp
your individual bullet points should be.
Most presentation decks are way too long. This is not a sign of people working too hard
– it is actually a sign of laziness. Doing a brain-dump and hoping something will stick is
easy; condensing and distilling is much harder.
Here are my rules of thumb when it comes to the ideal length of presentations
(especially if the audience is senior):
● 30-minute presentations (especially to execs) should have no more than 5 to 6

punchy slides.
● 60-minute presentations can probably go up to 8 to 10 slides. Anything else can
be included as pre-read or appendix slides (i.e. included but not presented).

If you struggle to meet these constraints: that is a sign that (a) you either have an
incredibly complex situation that can’t be tackled in one short meeting or (b) you
probably need to ruthlessly sharpen and prioritize your messaging further.
Most of the time it’s the latter.
Here’s why all of this matters: Execs are often impatient. Most do not have the patience
for you to deliver a long soliloquy or run a presentation at your own flow. They’ll read
the headlines quickly and jump in with questions within minutes if they sense you’re
burying the lede.
Side note: this is also why you should almost never put animations into your
presentations with senior audiences. When you’re in front of execs, you will rarely have
the opportunity to control the flow exactly as you plan, as they will interject with
comments and questions as they please.
And when they throw questions at you (and you happen to be in the middle of your cool
animation flow that takes five clicks — or was it four?), you want to be able to tackle
those questions directly, or jump quickly to the slide that addresses them.
The last thing you want is to appear rattled while you’re frantically clicking around your
animation-littered slides to find the right landing spot.
But now back to our topic on brevity. It's worth noting that it doesn’t matter how smart
or how nice your senior audience is. You simply can’t get away with sloppy slides.
Here’s why: the really sharp execs will not tolerate time being wasted. To this day I still
vividly remember an incident early on in my career. I was delivering a strategy
presentation to a director, and I was literally less than 10 seconds into my first slide
before the director cut me off and said, "OK, next."
Needless to say I was rattled. But looking back, it was laughably obvious why she reacted
that way. My slide had a big bar chart that only served to illustrate one very simple
datapoint. Even worse, it turned out to be a largely irrelevant datapoint to the strategy I
wanted to deliver.

No wonder she wanted to fast-forward.
This was a prime example of me being lazy: not only did I waste a whole slide on one
simple datapoint (strike 1), I used that weak slide as my opening slide (strike 2), and it
turns out that datapoint had little to do with the actual strategy I wanted to present
(strike 3).
Even now I cringe just thinking about it!
On the other hand, ironically enough, execs that are not very sharp will also disrupt your
flow, because they have terrible attention spans, and/or get lost in minutiae super
quickly.
Early on in my career I worked for someone who would never let me get past my first
slide, because they would inevitably get distracted by some minor point within the first
few minutes and go straight down a rabbit hole. We would spend the whole 30 minutes
talking about the trees rather than the forest.
So very quickly I learned to be prepared. I went into meetings as if I only had one slide
to present. I made sure that one slide was sharp, to the point, and effective.
However, brevity is not just about having the least number of slides. It’s also making
sure that every slide has a purpose. The litmus test is this: if you remove a certain slide,
does your story flow break? Is your argument significantly weakened?
If the answer is not really, you probably have a lazy slide that needs to work harder (or
even scrapped altogether). To have any slides that don’t “work” hard enough to deliver
above-average impact is to waste the valuable time you have with exec-level audiences.
The opportunity cost is larger than you think.
Now let's talk about something that appears trivial but is disproportionately critical:
headlines.

Why It's Critical to Build Good Headlines
Headlines will make or break your presentation.
They take 10 seconds to write but can take hours to get right. I have seen over and over
again instances where really good material fails to deliver the desired impact, simply
because of sloppy headlines alone.
In fact, some people neglect to write actual headlines on their slides: they put down
labels, i.e. simply describing what the slide is about (“annual growth rates by market
for the last 5 years”), instead of writing an actual headline with insight (“we
underperform against competition in our biggest markets”).
Here are two questions I use to interrogate every slide in every presentation I build:
● If the entire content of a presentation was removed except the headlines, do the
headlines themselves still tell a coherent, logical, and tight-knit story?
● Do the charts and bullet points in the slide actually support the headlines?
If I find myself answering “no” at any point, I know that I have work to do.
To be fair, it’s quite natural to develop blind spots as you build out your slides.
Sometimes you forget that the flow of your headlines don’t work anymore given you
rejigged the storyline.
Sometimes you don’t realize that you could have easily combined two slides into one and
delivered the same message.
And sometimes you move charts and graphs around and you forget that some headlines
now lack supporting evidence. All of these things can trip up your presentation and
create opportunities for distraction or confusion.
Now, assuming that your headlines jive with your content and they tell a logical story,
you should then pressure-test how good those headlines are individually. Luckily
enough, the guiding principles for writing headlines that work are rather simple:

● Be Strong
● Be Direct
● Be Crisp
Let's start with the first one.
[1] Being Strong
A lot of the guiding principles for writing a good resume apply to writing good headlines
for presentations.
A weak headline is something like the project was enabled by collaboration and deep
alignment. (I've actually seen this headline in an internal presentation).
The issue with this headline is that it is not only passive, but also uninsightful: who
would ever argue that collaboration isn’t important for any project? And why would you
ever need to dedicate a slide to claim that it is?
And as if that wasn’t enough, the nail in the coffin is the generic corporate jargon: we
naturally tune out these buzzwords whenever we see them, and such a headline makes
us want to simply skip ahead without ever needing to see the content.
Here are a couple more real-life examples I’ve seen from actual strategy presentations
that unfortunately epitomize the meaning of weak headlines:
⛔ “Our focus and attention will be centered on our org’s themes.” First off,
don’t focus and attention mean the same thing? Also, who would realistically claim that
their strategy doesn’t align to their organization’s focus areas? This is a safe headline
that ultimately says nothing of importance. If anything, I’d be more interested in a
headline that says “we’re focusing on something very different from other teams.”
⛔ “Momentum of Supplier Outreach in XYZ Country Drives Results.” I’m

not sure why they didn’t feel comfortable simply saying the supplier outreach program

drove results. I also don’t know whether we think the results are very good (or just
non-zero). There’s also no actionable recommendation or implied insight (should we
double down on this strategy or…?). As an audience I’m just left dangling and have to
interpret the charts on the slide myself.
Let's now talk about how to be direct.
[2] Being Direct
A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that they need fancy words and complex
sentences in order to sound professional and be taken seriously.
This is not necessarily wrong – there’s a particular tone and prose we associate with
professional and high-quality work – but it will completely backfire if you apply that
notion to headlines.
The best thing you can do with your headlines is to be extremely simple and direct.
Avoid corporate jargon like it’s the plague.
Littering your headlines with corp-speak may make you feel like you’re a professional
consultant, but in reality you’ve simply created mini-headaches for your audience. At
best they grimace and try to decode what you’re actually trying to say. At worse they
simply tune it out as they assume it's generic corp-speak with little substance.
Again, here are a couple real-life examples of what NOT to do (again, I wish I was
making them up):
⛔ “Office location decisions to adapt to 3 key design objectives, leveraging

a 5 question framework to define suitability.”
● I had to read this three times. Then I realized it was simply telling me that there’s
a very smart framework in place and I should just trust it.

⛔ “The decision will be made at an agreed-upon (RACI) level by following a
robust data driven process and partner teams need to be consulted.”
● I had to read this five times. Then I realized the message was basically “don’t
worry, we’ll have clear decision principles and you’ll be consulted.”
Here's the lesson: Be direct. Don’t be afraid of sounding dumb. If anything, it requires a
fantastic command of rhetoric to be able to create sharp but simple messages. The ones
littered with corpspeak are the ones that scream insecurity and inexperience.
So do yourself a favor and make your headlines sharp, punchy, and direct. Stop working
against yourself by crafting complex headlines that serve no purpose. Stop saying crazy
stuff like:
"Large headroom ahead buoyed by market growth but our share of

advertiser budgets is under-indexed thus requiring a fundamental pivot in
go-to-market strategy."
Instead, just say something like:
"The opportunity is huge and we’re missing out."
And lastly, let's talk about what it means to be crisp.
[3] Being Crisp
Caveat: this guiding principle borders slightly on style, but I truly believe it is the
foolproof approach to craft an exec-ready tone.
In a way, this touches upon the earlier point about brevity as well: most of the time, if
you can make your headlines short, they’re likely to feel crisp as well, which adds that
extra punch for your message.

However, they don’t always necessarily go in tandem. Here’s a couple illustrative
examples:
● Short, not necessarily crisp: Our Daily Active Users have been trending
down for 3 quarters.
● Short AND crisp: We’re losing users.
Here’s another example:
● Short, not necessarily crisp: Competitors X & Y combined for 70% of market
share.
● Short AND crisp: Market is dominated by X & Y.
In a way, the crispness comes from elevating statements to stories. It gives life to
(boring) factual statements. If you do it right, you’ll find that your headlines will carry
an extra punch and captivate your audience from the get-go.
Now let's talk about tone.
Why Using the Right Tone Matters
We talked about being strong, direct, and crisp with headlines. If we zoom out a bit,
we’ll realize that similar guiding principles apply to any prose on your slides.
I think of this as the tone of the presentation.
It may seem minor, but thinking about your tone intentionally not only helps you
increase the chances of your presentation landing, it also ensures that your intended
nuances are not lost when an offline audience reads your slides.
Sometimes you want your tone to be dispassionate and objective. Sometimes you want
to convey excitement and urgency. Sometimes you want to have your cake and eat it too,
e.g. telling your audience your business is really understaffed (while assuring them that
you're still doing a great job nonetheless).

This is when crafting the right tone (and ensuring its consistency) is incredibly
important.
I remember a global VP who used to visit my region every year, and without fail he
would always opine:
"You guys always tell me business is great and growth is fantastic, but you
also always tell me that the house is burning and you can’t grow without
more headcount and product support. These two things can’t both be true."
He was most likely half-joking (or rather, half-serious), but I think about this incident a
lot. His observation wasn’t wrong, but to be fair to our business, the two polarizing
sentiments were both valid – they just needed to be qualified accordingly and put under
the right context.
Again, this is when tone plays a huge role. It’s super easy to write a presentation that has
an incredibly optimistic tone and pats itself on the back on every slide. It’s also rather
easy to write a presentation with a doom-and-gloom tone in order to convey a sense of
urgency and instigate action.
However, it requires incredible precision to be able to convey that nuance. Thinking

clearly about how to construct your tone will help you master this.
Don't Save the Best for Last
This is one of the things where, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
I’m talking about something incredibly simple, which is putting your talking points in
descending order of importance (or urgency).
This works at the most granular level in any part of your slides. Whenever you have a list
of items (e.g. a list of asks, or a list of challenges), ask yourself whether the most
important talking point is on top.

This sounds trivial but it’s not.
Imagine you have a list of five things you want to pitch your stakeholders on. Do you...
● ...start with the most urgent ask (e.g. the house will be on fire if you don’t get it
asap)?
● ...start with the most important ask (e.g. something that won’t deliver
short-term revenue but will be a long-term gamechanger)?
● ...start with the most complex ask (i.e. something that your audience won’t
understand unless you explain it live)?
Each of these approaches is an intentional, strategic choice that sends a meaningful

signal to a discerning audience. It is surprising how many people create lists in their
presentations, without realizing that the order of items implies a certain stack-ranking
and sends a certain message.
This is not even considering the fact that there is always the risk of running out of time
for presentations, in which case it becomes imperative to ringfence time for your most
important talking points.
Of course, you will have to be the one to decide what is most important or most urgent
in each case. If you can do that, you are strategic.
Tailor Your Message to the Audience
It should be rather obvious that you need to tailor your presentation to whoever is on
the receiving end.
But most people don’t think about this intentionally.
The common pitfall is to subconsciously assume every word, phrase, and abbreviation
will mean the same thing to your audience as to yourself.

The other common pitfall is not asking yourself whether your intended audience is likely
to even care about what you’re talking about.
When you do ask these questions, you’ll realize how important it is to flex: sometimes
you need to talk a bit more about the trees, and sometimes a bit more about the forest.
(And on some days it’s not about wood at all.)
Here’s an example.
I used to write a lot of presentations on behalf of senior leadership to lobby for support
in my region. While the talking points were mostly consistent over time, inevitably we’d
need to customize depending on the intended audience.
If we were lobbying Product and Engineering folks, we’d tend to index a bit more on
portraying local market nuances and competitive dynamics, in order to illustrate the
rapid pace of innovation in the region.
However, if we were talking to finance leadership, we’d craft our narrative to clearly
illustrate why there is a need to invest in the region for growth (and what returns the
company could expect to reap over time).
And sometimes we’d need to socialize these talking points in town-hall meetings. In
those cases, I’d craft our narrative with a careful tone of cautious optimism (“we have so
much potential ahead, but we can’t let our foot off the brakes”).
Be intentional about thinking through who your audience is, what they’ll care about, and
what message you want to land with them. The same exact presentation could be a
homerun for some audiences and a complete dud for some others.
Put Things in Context
Presentations don’t always land well despite being backed by strong datapoints and
amazing charts. Sometimes the reason is simple: the data isn’t put into context.

Messages are very easy to land when numbers are either big or tied to common
knowledge bases.
● He makes a million dollars a year – that’s a lot.

● We doubled our market share to 40% this year – that’s quite impressive.
● Country X saw one million new internet users come online last year – hold up, I
don’t really know how to feel. Is that a lot or a little? Well, probably depends on if
you're talking about Japan or Jamaica.
This is the first step of putting data into context: Anchor on things that people
already understand.
Don’t just say:
"Asia has added 1.5 billion new internet users over the last decade."
Instead, show them that:
"1.5 billion is the equivalent of all existing internet users in Europe and the
Americas today."
Similarly: Don’t just say "our product saw 50 million hours of usage this year." It's
hard to decide whether 50 million is considered a lot or a little. Contextualize it by
showing how many hours a day your power users are hooked on your product.
Too often we see slides that assume everyone will have the same yardstick for what’s
considered big, fast, efficient, good; that is a dangerous assumption.
In the worst case scenario, this can even backfire. Some presentations try to impress the
audience by simply packaging every stat into millions and billions without proper
context.
But forcing your audience to buy into your message by simply throwing lots of zeros at
them and hoping it’ll stick is dangerously close to insulting their intelligence.

A discerning audience will end up less-than-impressed, and might even become
defensive and dismiss your narrative as fluff. At best, they'll simply tune it out.
After all, when’s the last time you saw someone actively present something that showed
how small or mediocre their business was?
Analytical Thinking
You don't need to be a math genius to be analytical. But it does help to be good with
numbers.
But I’m not talking about doing long division in our heads.
Rather, we want to possess a very specific set of statistical and mathematical concepts,
which can help bring clarity to many facets of the job (not to mention improving your
bullsh*t radar immensely!).
Don’t worry – it’s not a very long list, and most of these concepts are very digestible,
even if they take a little bit of getting used to.
The first one is the concept of causality.
Causality
Consider the following scenario: You are a General Manager overseeing the business of
several countries.
One day, one of your country managers tells you that her team recently launched a new
sales campaign in one city, and the city's sales this month rose 3% vs. last month.
As a result, she is lobbying you to invest a substantial amount so she can scale the
campaign to the rest of her country.

Your first instinct should be to question the country manager’s claim on attribution.
How do we know if the recent rise in sales can actually be attributed to this campaign?
And if so, how much?
It is surprising how often people fail to challenge these types of claims in the workplace;
over and over again, I see instances where if there is some action, and there is some
(positive) result, someone is claiming credit for it without putting much effort into
proving the causality.
In this example, if we were the General Manager, we should ask the country manager to
explain why she believes this sales campaign truly drove an uplift.
Here are some potential answers, in ascending order of sophistication:
● Not bad, but not great: “We can’t prove it, but this is the only thing we did
differently this month, so we believe the sales campaign must have driven most of
the 3% uplift.”
● Slightly better: “We can’t prove it, but we did look at other cities as well, and
most saw a small decline this month. Our test city was the only one to rise – so we
think the sales campaign must have worked.”
● Much better: “For benchmarking purposes, we picked twenty similar cities that
didn’t run the sales campaign, and their monthly sales remained flat, while our
test city rose by 3%. This gives us much more confidence that our sales campaign
worked.”
Talking like this is a bit awkward obviously. But your holy grail is something like the
following graph, as it is the only way to credibly demonstrate causality:

The holy grail of cause-and-effect.
Statistical Significance
Of course, in reality, not every experiment can be perfectly set up, and not every result is
clean and conclusive. And business decisions still have to be made with imperfect data.
However, even if business circumstances render this type of rigor impractical, you still
have ways of sense-checking these claims (and sniffing out potential bullsh*t).
This is when the concept of statistical significance comes into play.
The idea is actually quite simple: for a given signal, you’re simply trying to gauge how
likely it is to be random noise.
To do this, you want to get a sense of the variance of the metric in question, i.e. the
range in which it usually fluctuates. It turns out that most things follow what’s called a
normal distribution, which allows us to quantify how abnormal an observed incident is.

The more “abnormal” it is, the more confident we are that we’re reacting to something
that’s, well, worth reacting to.
Let's illustrate this by going back to the earlier example, where our country manager
told us about the amazing 3% sales uplift she observed.
We talked about how, in order to better establish causality, we would expect our country
manager to leverage control groups in her claim.
This is good, but technically not good enough.
Sure, we might have established a 3% incremental uplift, but we just don’t know how
meaningful that 3% uplift is. There is still a chance that we are reacting to noise, and the
problem is we don’t know what those chances are.
To figure this out, we simply need to figure out how sales figures tend to fluctuate.
Imagine a scenario where sales figures can easily differ by 10% every day. Well, in that
case, perhaps even if we did nothing, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a 3% rise suddenly.
It’s just part of the daily ebb and flow.
But on the other hand, what if sales were extremely stable? Then our country manager
could give us an extremely compelling answer, such as:
“We compared our test city against the right benchmark cities, AND we
also looked at the statistical significance of the uplift. As you know, our
sales are very stable on a daily basis, with the standard deviation being less
than 1%. This gives us extreme confidence that the 3% average uplift we
saw this past month was not a fluke.”
Of course, it’s hard to expect everyone at work to go through this level of rigor before
putting forth an argument. But if you can actually get your hands on the data, you can at
least quickly figure out how much noise you’re dealing with.

Here’s the trick: When things follow a normal distribution pattern, then you can expect
about 68% of datapoints to land within one standard deviation to both sides of the
average, and just over 95% to fall within two standard deviations.
In human-speak, this means that if you’re given a signal that is at least two standard
deviations away from the expected average, you can be at least 95% sure that you’re
reacting to something out of the ordinary (and therefore meaningful).
If it’s only one standard deviation away from the average: well, it might still be
noteworthy, but you just need to know that you might simply be reacting to noise a third
of the time.
A third of the time is too high for me.
My personal rule of thumb is to only take things seriously when I feel that there’s at least
an 80% chance I’m not reacting to noise. In fact, I might even dial that threshold up to
90% for important decisions.
This means that if a given signal is not at least 1 to 1.5 standard deviations different from
the average, I treat it as noise until stronger evidence comes into play.
In fact, even if I can’t get my hands on the data, I make sure to ask whoever’s presenting
the argument to tell me a bit more about how much the metric in question tends to
fluctuate.
Sometimes I don’t even need an answer: just seeing the reaction of my interlocutors
alone already tells me how much confidence I should have in their claims.
And now, let’s make sure we also talk about the basics: emails and meetings.

…and Nailing the Basics
If you’re in the world of StratOps, you need to ensure excellence in the basics. So let’s
talk about what it means in the context of emails and meetings.
How to Write Emails (That Won't Get Ignored)
Almost everybody will read your emails, but not all of them will actually respond or take
action. When it comes to writing emails and maximizing the chances of getting what I
want, I have the following guiding principles:
📌 Keep the email short. My audience should be able to finish reading my email
within 20 seconds. Use crisp bullet points (ideally no more than three); avoid long
prose. Brevity also improves tone, which helps build executive presence.
📌 If you cannot realistically keep the email short: ask yourself whether you
should set up a live meeting instead (or send a brief email to set context but reserve the
discussion for the live meeting). Continue to avoid long prose and structure your email
into sections, for example:
● Context: Travel budgets are being slashed; we need to deprioritize 2 out of 3

events for the rest of the year.
● Ask: Please take 3 minutes to read through the trade-off assessment here (link)
and start formulating your view
● Next Steps: I’ve set up time for us to discuss live this Thursday and make a
decision collectively.
📌 Another reason not to write long emails: It has the unintended side effect of
showing that you lack exec readiness, given your inability to distill things down to
simple, crisp messages.

📌 If action is needed, put “Action Needed” in the subject line, and put the ask as the
first sentence in my email. Even better, tell them if this is a 10-second / 1-minute /
5-minute ask.
📌 If action is NOT needed, put "No Action Needed" in your subject line. Trust me,
there is nothing your recipients will appreciate more.
📌 Avoid email chains with too many recipients. Accountability diminishes as

more names appear in the recipient list. If you intend to gather feedback from more
than 3 people, invest the time to send them each an email separately instead. They’ll feel
much more compelled to respond.
📌 For sensitive subjects or dividing issues: I’ve never seen someone influence
others effectively by winning a debate through email. Remember: tone and trust are
hard to convey through emails and pings, and emotions can escalate quickly.
Meanwhile, people often forget to assume good intention. So when in doubt, be crisp
with your email, but offer to talk in person to show goodwill.
📌 As a corollary to the above: as the recipient, always assume good intention when
you can.
📌 Always assume that your emails can be forwarded. If there are statements
you would rather someone not see (even if taken out of context) – assume there’s a
non-zero chance they’ll see it. Either rephrase, ping privately, or save it for live meetings
where you can caveat or add nuance accordingly.
📌 Last but not least: Always review. Almost always you’ll find that you have
sentences that can be merged or cut entirely. Sometimes you’ll find things that make
sense individually but are now out of place because of the preceding content. Don’t skim
on the 2 minutes for revision and end up letting the first 10 minutes go to waste with an
email that falls flat.
Now let's talk about meetings.

How to Run Effective Meetings
Let’s talk about one-on-one meetings first.
Specifically, let’s focus on cadenced meetings, which tend to happen with people like
your manager, business partner, or an important senior stakeholder.
Here are my recommended best practices.
📌 Keep an agenda doc. It can be as simple as dropping in bullet points on what you
want to discuss for an upcoming meeting. This has a few benefits:
● It gives both sides a sense of what to prioritize discussing first, and how much
time to invest on a topic before switching gears.
● In addition, it gives you the chance to dictate the flow and show proactiveness,
especially if it is with your manager or someone more senior.
📌 Track action items (on your shared agenda document). If you’re meeting
someone and some action items fall on you, you can make a note directly in your
document. The next time you meet, you can easily give updates, and continue to
establish a good track record of executing on what you said you would.
● This works both ways, i.e. if the action item falls on the other person. It then
becomes much easier to follow up using the document and ensure accountability.
📌 Always give the headline first. Imagine you intend to use your upcoming 1:1
time with your manager so he/she can weigh in on a tricky decision. A lot of people
make the mistake of trying to paint the full picture before they get to their ask.
What they do is this: they explain the context, what they’ve tried already, the challenges
they’re facing…and then ten minutes later, they finally tell their manager they’d like
some advice.
You want to do the opposite instead. Flip it around. Tell your manager that you are
seeking their opinion, and give them a 30-second version of the problem. Also clarify

how much (or how little) context they have, and use that to calibrate how deep you need
to go.
Then you can dive in.
This helps put your manager in the right mindset when they listen to your spiel: they
know they are in problem-solving mode together with you, and which gears to turn in
their heads as you speak.
The reverse is true as well: if you’re simply trying to provide your manager with visibility
of the challenges you’re working through (but don’t really need them to step in), say
that up front. You can say something like:
“I don’t need anything from you, but I just wanted to make sure you have
visibility of what’s taking up half my time this week.”
Then they know they don’t need to jump in with their problem-solving hat on, and
instead focus on listening. They can also do things like: look out for things you did well,
or think through how to readjust your upcoming project pipeline based on your
bandwidth.
📌 Think about the meta-game. If you have fixed cadences with certain people,
think deeply about what message you’re sending based on the pattern of how you’re
using these meetings. Not every meeting has to be about critical business topics, but it’s
a problem if every meeting ends up being about tactical execution.
For instance: it’s fine to use 1:1 meetings with your manager to flag bandwidth problems
and ask for support, but if that becomes a recurring pattern every meeting, your
manager might question your ability to prioritize and execute independently. Make sure
you are using your meetings intentionally, and establish a pattern over time that is
reflective of the brand you want to portray for yourself.
📌 Last but not least: think about the value exchange. Meetings are a time
investment; on balance both parties should be getting non-trivial value from meeting

regularly. Usually this is a non-issue: meetings where one side is benefiting significantly
less than the other will slowly disappear anyway.
However: be aware if you find yourself in meetings where you need the other person
more than they need you. That is OK, but you do want to be extra prepared and effective
in those instances, so as not to further disincentivize them from spending more time on
you.
How to Make Group Meetings Better (and How to Skip Useless Ones)
Let’s now talk about group meetings. We’ll focus on situations where you have no
more than a dozen people: anything more than that is usually a unilateral presentation
rather than a discussion-based meeting.
But instead of sharing a laundry list of best practices, I want to share four simple
questions that we can use to pressure-test the efficacy of any meeting.
Every meeting is different (some meetings shouldn’t even exist in the first place), but if
you ask yourself these questions after every meeting, you’ll find yourself participating in
(or conducting) meetings much more effectively.
You might even get the gift of time by knowing which meetings to skip!
Here are the four questions:
1. What was the purpose of this meeting?

2. Did I need to be there?
3. If I did, what value did I add?
4. Did we achieve said purpose, and what could we have done better?
Let's go one by one.

[1] "What was the purpose of this meeting?"
It is surprising how many people are willing to sit through meetings with unclear
agendas, without a single attempt to clarify the purpose of the meeting.
Sometimes this is due to the fear of looking dumb (what if it’s clear to everybody else?).
Sometimes this is due to not wanting to appear rude (what if I make the person running
the meeting look bad?).
But those concerns can be easily overcome. What you want to always keep in mind is
that there are essentially only 3 types of meetings, and if you can’t figure out what kind
of meeting you’re in, that’s a red flag.
The 3 types are as follows:
● Information-sharing meetings: Most meetings tend to fall into this category.

The purpose is to minimize information asymmetry and make the attendees
better-informed. This can range all the way from super important cascades (e.g.
someone giving a debrief on recent discussions with leadership) to super tactical
updates (e.g. someone sharing instructions on how to provide input in a
spreadsheet).
● Decision-making meetings: Self-explanatory. Intention is to obtain input
before making a call on something again, this can range from critical business
decisions (do we move ahead with this investment?), to those that are less so
(what topics do we cover in our next quarterly review?)
● Problem-solving meetings: Self-explanatory, although the format can look
very different depending on the problem type. Whether you are brainstorming,
whiteboarding, debating, or simply presenting something to gather feedback, you
are in a problem-solving meeting. Problem-solving meetings are all about
surfacing and polishing ideas.
To be clear: this is not rocket science.

However, the key is to use this framework so we can recognize (a) when there’s no clear
anchor for a meeting or (b) when a meeting type morphs into another one
unintentionally.
For instance: imagine that you’ve brought together four people from different
departments to discuss how you might build a business case for a new product launch.
Your intention is not to make immediate decisions, but rather to problem-solve together
by getting the creative juices going from a diverse set of perspectives.
However, if you don’t make your intentions clear, you could find some people holding
back, as they might mistakenly think this is simply an information-sharing meeting, and
they haven’t been given the right to debate or disagree.
You could also run the risk of your meeting getting hijacked if you’re not clear about
your intentions: some people might treat this as a good opportunity to update one
another on the latest product roadmap updates – never a bad thing, but heavily distracts
from your original intention, and wastes the precious time you have.
Always know what kind of meeting you're running – and then say it explicitly.
Let’s now move onto question #2.
[2] Did I need to be there?
OK, so you’ve established the purpose of the meeting. You should then ask yourself:
"Did I need to be there? What would’ve happened if I didn’t join? Could I

have created more value by spending that time elsewhere?"
These are not trivial questions. Whether it’s pride, confusion, politeness, or something
else: most people tend to treat meeting invites as if they are edicts. Their default is to
accept any calendar invite that comes their way.

Their logic usually goes:
● … if I’m invited, there must be a good reason.

● …if I ask whether I can simply follow up offline, I’m implying that the meeting is
not important and I might offend the person.
● …if I don’t show up and everyone else does, it implies that I am dispensable.
● …if I don’t show up, I might miss something important, and I won’t have a way
to know for sure
At the core of all of this is fear. Fear of appearing dumb. Fear of offending other people.
Fear of appearing unimportant. Fear of ignorance.
And when fear takes over, we end up joining meetings that we really didn’t need to.
Look around the next time you have a group meeting, and try to spot the people who are
multitasking away on their laptop: chances are half of them didn’t really need to join
this meeting.
Instead, we should feel fully empowered to decline meetings if we believe we can engage
more effectively via other means.
As a result, your first step should always be to assess what you contribute to this
meeting. If you don’t believe you’ll add incremental viewpoints versus other attendees,
skip it.
Alternatively, if you can contribute more effectively through other means (e.g. via a
short email offline, or having a two-minute in-person chat with the person separately) –
then you should also exercise discipline and decline to join.
OK, but let’s say the meeting invite passes the initial smell test. Then your next step
should be to consider what you’ll be getting from this meeting.
Yes, you have the right to be slightly selfish and think of your time as a valuable asset
(which it is!). You want to ensure that on average, you are getting enough bang for your
buck when you invest your time into meetings.

Of course, treating your time as a valuable asset does not mean that you only take
meetings that benefit you – collaborativeness is a two-way street after all – but you do
want to make sure that you regularly ask yourself, "am I protecting my time
adequately?"
Nobody sets out to waste other people’s time, but it just naturally happens. The onus is
fully on you to get over various forms of fear, and properly protect your time. Here’s a
simple A-B-C framework you can leverage to say no to meetings (respectfully):
Ask More Questions:
● Can I get more details on the agenda and objectives to make sure I’m needed?
● Could you share the intended questions for discussion and we can decide if we
need a meeting to discuss?
Bring Context:
● I won’t be able to attend unfortunately, as I need to prioritize a deliverable for

this week, but happy to follow up offline.
● I won’t join this one as Kevin is confirmed to attend and can represent our
team’s point of view already.
● I won’t join this one but I will share my updates for the group via a write-up
prior to the meeting.
Call an Audible: Put yourself down as a maybe, pending other developments. Perhaps
an email thread or hallway conversation will have easily solved the issue prior to the
meeting, thus no longer requiring your attendance.
[3] If I needed to be there, what value did I add?
Assuming you’ve attended a worthwhile meeting, this is when you honestly ask yourself:
Did I add enough value? While the onus is on the meeting organizer to ensure clear

meeting objectives and facilitate the discussion accordingly, the onus is on us to ensure
we actually added value.
Here are some common pitfalls to watch out for.
The first is attempting to multitask. What tends to happen is that you get the worst
of both worlds, as you are unable to fully engage in the live meeting, and you do a
mediocre job with whatever you were doing on your laptop. If the meeting is worth
joining, then it’s probably worth dedicating your entire mindspace. Otherwise, ask
yourself why you’re there in the first place.
The second is not speaking up. This doesn’t apply to every single situation, but a good
rule of thumb is to challenge yourself to deliver a point of view at least once for every
meeting you choose to attend; otherwise, choose to not attend at all.
Part of this is to force yourself to scrutinize whether you are actually bringing a unique
perspective to the table (otherwise why are you there in the first place?).
But part of it is also to protect your reputation: ironically, you are much better off not
attending a meeting at all, compared to showing up to a meeting but not saying a word.
You want to either show up and demonstrate a strong presence, or not show up at all.
Just don’t show up with a weak presence.
The third pitfall to watch out for, ironically, is speaking up too much.
Let me be clear: for the most part, being vocal is rarely a bad thing. But at some point in
your career (usually 8 to 10 years in) you will hit an inflection point, where you are
expected to demonstrate a certain level of executive presence and gravitas.
This is when you realize that sometimes the more you speak, the more you dilute your
message and your impact. You need to resist the urge to comment on everything, and
only throw your best punches.
In fact, as you become more experienced and senior, so will your natural urge to opine.

Resist that urge.
Make sure that the one or two or three comments you make in a meeting are crisp and
to the point. If you exercise this discipline consistently, people will notice, and
they will take what you say extra seriously. You do not want to be the person in the room
who tries to comment on everything, seemingly adding a lot of value, but is unknowingly
diluting his or her own gravitas.
[4] Did we achieve said purpose, and what could we have done better?
Sometimes meetings get derailed by other topics. Sometimes meetings aren’t

well-facilitated. Whatever it is, if a meeting did not accomplish its objectives, then we
want to think about what we can do to prevent the problem from festering and repeating
itself in the future.
For instance, we could consider doing the following:
● Give feedback to the meeting owner. Let them know how the meeting could’ve
been run better. Too many people shy away from giving feedback as an attendee,
but this just means more time is wasted in the future.
● Speak up the next time you spot a meeting potentially being derailed. Ask for a
time-check, or ask for something to be addressed offline.
● Suggest alternative approaches. Perhaps it didn’t make sense to hold a
group discussion before a certain analysis was built so the discussion could be
grounded on data. Perhaps a few 1:1 meetings should have taken place first to
align people on basics before bringing the group together. Whatever it is, make
sure you take a forward-looking view and think about what could’ve been done
better. Again, this will help you better protect your time going forward.

Last, But Not Least…
🧠 I write a newsletter for highly-motivated individual contributors (ICs) in tech

and beyond. Subscribe for free to get it directly in your inbox and join us.
Thank you for reading! I hope you found this guide helpful. Drop me a note on
LinkedIn and let me know your feedback.
About the Author
Hi there! This is Herng. By day I work as a strategist at Google (coming up on nearly

a decade), and by night I write original content on how to accelerate careers.
See more of my work at www.hernglee.com.

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© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 2

OK, but what kind of work is it specifically?

● Demystify with Data

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 3

D is for: Demystify with Data

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 4

In other words: there was no hypothesis to be tested; it was simply a good-to-have.

Let’s now talk about insights.

I is for: Inspire with Insights

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 5

Here's a couple examples to illustrate what this means.

[1] Data is raw and unprocessed. Insight is refined.

The illustration below shows the difference:

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 6

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 7

An illustrative example is shown below:

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 8

The strategy analyst tries to predict (within reason)

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 9

A is for: Amplify, Automate, or Accelerate

This can be achieved through a few ways:

● You can automate processes to save people time.

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 10

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 11

Let's now talk about lobbying.

L is for: Lobby with Love

This is a fantastic modus operandi to anchor on.

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 12

Another example: I might invest time into building a persuasive narrative so my

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 13

Let's now talk about the last pillar.

S is for: Steer with Structure

A well-functioning organization requires good governance, which is much more than

● How do we want to govern our OKRs? Is a quarterly review sufficient? Or do we

● How do we make sure there is scalability of best practices across our

● How do we engage cross-functional stakeholders effectively? Do we need to

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 14

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 15

So without further ado, let's dive in.

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 16

However, this is only half-correct.

This is essentially management consulting 101: it’s a useful framework to leverage to

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 17

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 18

I’ll share two extreme ends of the spectrum to illustrate this.

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 19

And then you’re back to random guessing. Not good.

It always starts out simple:

Perhaps the data isn’t perceived as trustworthy, perhaps the dashboard is

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 20

By this point, we can see how problem-solving becomes a rather straightforward

A Reminder on Structured Thinking

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 21

OK, so if it’s intentional, could it be that:

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 22

Let's start with the first one.

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 23

The objective is almost always to establish what is essentially an input-output

Let's illustrate with an example.

Well, what is the core of our narrative?

© hernglee.com Demystifying Strategy & Operations in Tech 24

[2] (Almost) everything can be explained by a 2x2