Week 1

What question did the pre-read leave you with?

One question each, 30 seconds.

If three of you are stuck on the same thing, we slow down there. Silence means we move fast.

The hard part: a lid you cannot see

You read three datasets: Project Oxygen, Gallup, the Peter Principle study. They agree: the lid is real and it is measured.

Nobody feels their own lid directly. It looks like other problems: the design nobody adopts, the promotion that gets stuck, the team that ships slower than it should.

By the time it feels like a leadership problem, it has been one for a while.

Source: Google Project Oxygen; Gallup; Benson, Li, and Shue, 2019

One lid, both tracks

Whether you lead a team of reports or lead technical direction without reports, the lid is the same.

It caps how far your architecture gets adopted exactly as it caps a team's output.

The same study that explains weak managers also explains Staff promotions that get stuck.

When a 9 runs at a 4

A real case: a strong engineer who stopped growing as a lead, capped by their own leadership lid.

The IC twin: the brilliant architect whose designs never get adopted, because nobody follows them.

Watch for the moment the lid shows up. It never looks like a leadership problem at first.

Debrief: put the incidents on the map

3 to 4 pairs share one incident each.

We place each incident on the four arcs. Where your incident lands points at the arc you need most.

Five tools, one job

• Eisenhower matrix
• Pareto
• The three Rs
• The 80 percent delegation rule
• Maker vs manager schedule

You read all five. Their one job: separate activity from accomplishment.

Source: Maxwell, the three Rs; Paul Graham, maker vs manager schedule

The hard part of the calendar audit

Cutting work that feels productive, and cutting work that still gives results.

Your calendar already holds the data. Tonight you read it, not defend it.

Same audit, different noise

The EM calendar fills with meetings you did not choose.

The senior IC calendar fills with review requests, Slack pings, and "do you have 5 minutes?"

Both tracks run the exact same audit this week.

The list of cuts is what saves you

A real case: the Q2 2026 OKR critique at Breadfast.

The value was in what came off the list, not in what stayed on it.

Debrief: the room average

Your none-percentages and stream counts go on the board.

The average is your cohort's baseline. It is usually a shock. This week's take-home starts from this number.

Burnout and imposter syndrome, named

They look different on each track:

• IC: scope anxiety, being the only technical voice in product conversations, "I do not deserve Staff"
• EM: carrying the team's emotional load; manager burnout does not look like IC burnout

We do not fix this today. Naming it early is the work.

The workbook this week

Two pages, both started tonight:

• The lid audit: your two ratings and the incident behind the gap
• The calendar ledger: where your R tags and none-percentage live

Everything else this week feeds these two pages.

Take-home: the calendar audit

Tag every block in last week's calendar R1, R2, R3, or none. Compute the none-percentage. Write 5 lines on what you would cut.

Counts as done: a screenshot of the tagged calendar plus the percentage, submitted by Thursday 6pm.

No artifact means not done.

Before next week

Read the one-pagers for the Law of Influence and the Law of Connection. Arrive with one question.

Tonight you led yourself. Next Friday: why would anyone follow you?