I will do basically anything to procrastinate working on this newsletter. It’s the procrastinator’s perfect storm: no external deadlines, amorphous, of dubious value. And it involves writing.

People who write love to talk about how painful writing is. Which… fine, we all self-mythologize a little bit.

The difficulty with writing is balancing the clown and the critic (or the child and the adult), sitting with one’s self for long periods, turning away from Updike’s pleasures, creating and identifying with things that are bad, so that you might create and identify with things that are good.

Of course, the difficulty is part of the allure. Writing grants the sort of smug self-satisfaction that only hard things can, and it doesn’t involve getting sweaty.

For me:

Writing

…is reckoning with not being as smart as I thought. I’m either more or less, never dead on.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, once pen hits paper or fingers, keyboard, I find I am less smart than I thought. The idea that sparkled in the mind looks dull on the page. One percent of the time, I soar higher than I imagined possible and find on the page an intelligence not my own.

Don’t worry: none of the 1% is in this newsletter.

One nice thing about writing is that one doesn’t have to be feeling beautiful to do it. Alas, not so for video…

Things of the Month

Over the course of a month, I encounter things. From those, I select some.

Here are the some:

Book of the Month

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Another quick read for those of you trying to read more books this year.

Tim Marshall, graduate of Prince Henry’s Grammar and known map enthusiast, puts the “geo” back into “geopolitics.” Each chapter profiles a country or region (Russia and the US get their own, countries in Europe and the Middle East have to share), and the strategic implications of their place in the world. Strategic depth, proxy wars, resource riches (and resource curses) — they’re all here. I learned a lot and had fun doing it, and isn’t that what you want from your non-fiction?

Imagining of the Month

Song(s) of the Month

I recently learned I have a family member who works with an artist named Asal (عَسَل, “honey” in Farsi).

I listened to her discography while writing this newsletter.

Ethan’s Guide to Management

My first best work-friend, who was very patient with me when I was 22 years old, received a well-deserved promotion and will manage a large team for the first time.

She asked me for any management insight I might have, and I said, “You’ll have to subscribe to The Cortado, and in three to four weeks, I’ll send you an email about it.”

When I became a people manager in 2017, I was obligated to take a course called “Managing the Salesforce Way.” Or maybe it was called “Hello, Salesforce Manager.”

One of the memorable tips from the course: sometimes, people cry. There are tears in Corporate America, and one must be prepared. When confronted with a sobbing direct report, the inexperienced manager may become uncomfortable and seek to extricate themselves from the situation with haste. The experienced (or trained) manager remains present, physically and figuratively. They reassure their tearful teammate that crying is okay, that they (the doleful direct report) shouldn’t feel embarrassed, that they (the empathetic leader) will hear them, through and over their sobs.

This was the one tip I relayed to my former colleague in person.

A valuable lesson to be sure, but what if no one happens to be crying?

The two key priorities that good managers… prioritize are:
1) motivation and 2) knowing (and teaching) the business.

Motivate

In global football (for my fellow Americans, soccer), coaches are called “managers.” There’s a pithy saying that a good manager can make a team 10% better, and a bad manager can make a team 30% worse. While I don’t endorse these percentages for corporate teams, I think the presence and direction of the asymmetry are correct.

In the short to medium run, the largest marginal benefit that a manager can effect is level of motivation. In the long run, a manager could in theory fire everyone and replace them with affable geniuses, but in the long run, to quote Keynes, “we are all dead.”

The reason why culture eats strategy for breakfast is because the best strategy sucks if no one is putting their back into it, and good corporate culture is just motivation at scale. A motivated knowledge worker does more of the little things more of the time, and when you multiply by a team or an organization, you create environments where people do work they are proud of.

Corporate culture carries less motivational water today than say, in the 2000s or 2010s, placing a larger burden / responsibility on managers to see to their teams’ needs. The waning of capital-C Culture has also created more variation between teams within the same organization. Which makes good managers all the more important / valuable / etc.

I’ve written some longer form essays about management, and while I’ve removed the part of this email where I quoted myself, I’ve left in the links.

But be careful! A culture of urgency will kill you, in an ironic twist, slowly. For more:

Double-click: you are the guide, not the hero.¹

Recall The Lord of the Rings. The hero is Frodo, or maybe Sam. Either way, big individual contributor energy.

The guide is Gandalf.

Your direct reports (and your customers!) want to be the heroes of their stories. Let them! In their stories, you get to be Gandalf.

Know the Business

The good manager must be able to articulate how the work of their team supports the mission of broader business. The benefits are manifold, but this newsletter is getting a little unwieldy, so I’ll limit to those relevant to communicating 1) up the org chart and 2) down the org chart.

1) Up: If you understand how your team bolsters the company’s business, you can communicate your teams’ needs in the language of said business, which is the language the executives speak. The less they have to translate, the better, because they are tired.

2) Down: Your team wants to understand their significance and place in the world (company). This is motivating! Knowing how they fit into the grand plan fortifies them against disillusionment. The broader context may also help them make better decisions, or at least more defensible ones. You won’t be privy to all these decisions since you won’t be micromanaging.

For more:

Marketing

No marketing insights this month, other than:

1. To offer one answer to “what is product marketing?”, I made a Product Marketing funnel thing on the website

2. Ethan’s Guide to Product Marketing is available by request, but if you request, I reserve the right to request feedback
   

   

   A preview

Ten percent (10%) of the year has elapsed. You get nine (9) more until 2026.

Thank you for spending some of your second 10% here.

Yours,
Ethan

1  A beloved professor once publicly excoriated me for using the word “double-click” in class. I thought I was being cool and techy; I did not know that she is an anti-corporate-jargon crusader, and that day, I fell beneath her rhetorical sword.