> Extract the kernel – everywhere I’ve ever worked, teams have struggled understanding executives. In every case, the executives could be clearer, but it’s not particularly interesting to frame these problems as something the executives need to fix. Sure, that’s true they could communicate better, but that framing makes you powerless, when you have a great deal of power to understand confusing communication. After all, even good communicators communicate poorly sometimes.
I gotta say, nothing fills me with as much excitement for a job as much as having to have a second job as a Kremlinologist, attempting to scry the motivations of the opaque execs, whose whims come down from On High, either engraved on stone tablets dropped directly into our teams, or brought down to us through three translation layers of middle-management.
Additionally, the explanation might work for the exec asking the question, but not for others.
I don't like that executives don't have to put in the effort to communicate their concerns and put pressure on the people who already have the pressure of researching, validating, and presenting the solution.
I'm probably going deeper than I should. Still, if the executive asking the question isn't technical, he could direct the question to the executive who's supposed to have a technical background that earned their position in the company. You know, people making decisions should have an understanding of what they are building/selling.
One common leadership trend is to give minimal feedback like “this is not cool” and rely on competent people directly under the executive to guess what that means.
Competent people can often lead themselves in the right direction, especially with the use of copious after-meetings in which everyone tries to interpret the executive’s feedback.
After all, the executives are busy and hard to get access to.
Completely agree. And I think a lot of roles frame this as "part of the job", something always unavoidable. But if I was an exec and my team was spending half their time trying to read between the lines of my poor communication, fixing that would be priority #1; what an enormous waste of time for people who I (ostensibly) hired for their other skills!
> I gotta say, nothing fills me with as much excitement for a job as much as having to have a second job as a Kremlinologist, attempting to scry the motivations of the opaque execs ...
Why is the lack of understanding necessarily the exec and not you? It's a victim perspective to say it's all them and you are a victim of them, and therefore have no responsibility for it. It's irrational - the problems of communication are well known (and if you don't understand them, that is also irresponsble, imho). It's you too; worry about you, do your job well, including the work, and joy, of understanding others.
The problem is usually both - both trying to cram the other's words into the framework of their own perspective. Ash and Barry have different perspectives, different agendas and understandings. When Ash hears Barry speak, Ash makes the mistake of trying to cram Barry's ideas into Ash's perspective, where of course they don't quite work. It's like taking parts from one building under construction and trying to use them on another - 'these parts are awful! they don't fit or work at all!'. Of course not.
Always, if there's a problem and you're serious about it, the place to start is with what you can control and are responsible for - it's in the mirror.
Your framing here, while I admit is quite clever, is so overly cynical that I think it misses the point entirely.
I think a more generous interpretation of his point is:
1. Everyone (execs and others) needs to translate their true goals and motivations into language, and some people do this better than others. Even great communicators have some delta between what they say and what they truly mean.
2. Thus, it pays to keep this in mind, and think from the perspective of "OK, what is the top-priority, primary thing that this exec is really trying to get across", which can sometimes mean you need to separate the wheat from the chaff of what they're saying.
Frankly, I think this is good advice for anyone on the receiving end of a message. I think this HN guideline deserves a reminder: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." Thus, you can either interpret his statement in a positive manner about how you can be more effective when on the receiving end of a message, or you can complain about needing to be a Kremlinologist.
I gotta say, nothing fills me with as much excitement for a job as much as having to have a second job as a Kremlinologist, attempting to scry the motivations of the opaque execs, whose whims come down from On High, either engraved on stone tablets dropped directly into our teams, or brought down to us through three translation layers of middle-management.