THE BUILD ORDER

We think you'd be great at leading a team.

Translation: You're productive and don't cause problems, so we're going to make you responsible for people who might.

Introduction

We're re-aligning the team's priorities to better serve the business.

Translation: The team built a bunch of stuff nobody asked for, and now we have to pretend the pivot was strategic.

Ch. 1: The Build Order

We have a strong culture here.

Translation: We have a unique culture here. Whether it's strong or just loud is a question nobody's allowed to ask.

Ch. 2: Culture Is Not a Poster on the Wall

We use our values to guide every decision.

Translation: We use our values to justify every decision we were going to make anyway.

Ch. 2: Culture Is Not a Poster on the Wall

I'm not expecting you to work weekends.

Translation: I'm working weekends and will notice if you don't, but I need plausible deniability.

Ch. 3: You Are the Culture

We encourage teams to develop their own ways of working.

Translation: We have no consistent operating model, so you're on your own. Good luck, and please don't embarrass us at the quarterly review.

Ch. 4: Building Culture That Survives Contact with Reality

We co-created our team values in a collaborative workshop.

Translation: The leader came in with the values already written, asked the team to rearrange the wording for ninety minutes, and called it co-creation. Everyone got a sticky note. Nobody truly got a vote.

Ch. 4: Building Culture That Survives Contact with Reality

Our onboarding program gives new hires everything they need to succeed.

Translation: We have a two-day orientation that covers benefits enrollment, compliance training, and where to find the coffee. The actual information they need to do their job will be transmitted orally by a tired colleague sometime during week six.

Ch. 4: Building Culture That Survives Contact with Reality

Transformation initiative.

Translation: Build impressive things, track activity metrics, hope no one notices during the budget review.

Ch. 5: Know Your Flywheel

We need to break down silos.

Translation: We built silos, incentivized silos, rewarded silos, and are now blaming people for acting like they're in silos.

Ch. 6: Finding Your Leverage

We value our middle managers as the backbone of the organization.

Translation: We expect you to absorb all the dysfunction we create and somehow produce motivated teams.

Ch. 7: Expanding Your Influence

We're restructuring to better align with our strategic priorities.

Translation: Someone new is in charge and they want their own org chart. The strategic priorities haven't changed. The nameplate on the corner office has.

Ch. 8: How to Build a Durable Org Chart

We're an Agile organization.

Translation: We renamed our meetings and added a standup. The waterfall continues, but now it has sticky notes.

Ch. 9: The Minimum Viable Bureaucracy

We have a robust governance framework to ensure alignment and manage risk.

Translation: We have six committees, four intake forms, and nobody knows who really decides. But the slides look great.

Ch. 10: Fighting the Bureaucracy Hydra

We're looking for a rockstar.

Translation: We have unrealistic expectations, below-market compensation, and no onboarding plan. But the foosball table is really nice.

Ch. 11: Hiring into the Foundation

We invest heavily in our people's development.

Translation: We have a tuition reimbursement program nobody uses, a mandatory e-learning platform with a 12% completion rate, and a mentorship program that pairs people based on an HR spreadsheet and hopes for the best. But the budget line item looks great.

Ch. 12: The Manager's Real Job Is Conditions

We have a rigorous performance management process.

Translation: We have a spreadsheet, a forced ranking, and a conversation everybody dreads. The spreadsheet gets updated once a year, the ranking produces three months of passive-aggressive behavior, and the conversation ends with both parties pretending it was productive.

Ch. 12: The Manager's Real Job Is Conditions

We have a really collaborative culture.

Translation: Open floor plan. Nobody talks. But the Slack GIF game is world-class.

Ch. 13: The Physics of Your Team

This is a top priority.

Translation: This is one of our forty-seven top priorities. It will remain a top priority until the next top priority arrives, at which point it will become a 'backlog item' that nobody deletes because deleting it would require a decision.

Ch. 14: Select, Ship, Measure, and Learn

She really empowered her team.

Translation: The team ran itself, so leadership assumed the job was easy and gave her a harder one with fewer resources. Her reward for building a self-sustaining system was a new system that needed building from scratch.

Ch. 15: Becoming Obsolete

We're like a family here.

Translation: We expect unpaid emotional labor and unlimited loyalty, and like most families, we have topics nobody is allowed to bring up at dinner.

Author Original

We have an open-door policy.

Translation: The door is open. The career consequences of walking through it are unlisted.

Author Original

Feedback is a gift.

Translation: Feedback flowing downward is a gift. Feedback flowing upward is an attitude problem.

Author Original

We celebrate failure here.

Translation: We celebrate one heavily edited failure story per year, told by an executive whose failure got them promoted.

Author Original

She's a great culture fit.

Translation: We can't articulate what we're screening for, which is how we keep hiring the same person with a different haircut.

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We work hard and play hard.

Translation: The work is mandatory. So is the play.

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Bring your whole self to work.

Translation: Bring the parts of yourself that ship features and enjoy trivia night.

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We're passionate about our mission.

Translation: Compensation question deflected in one sentence.

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This is a safe space to disagree.

Translation: The disagreement will be noted, thanked, and remembered at calibration.

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We assume positive intent.

Translation: You're required to assume ours. We'll keep our options open on yours.

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We practice radical candor.

Translation: A book one director read that now provides air cover for whatever he was already saying.

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We don't have egos here.

Translation: We have exactly one, and everyone schedules around it.

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We're a flat organization.

Translation: We have a hierarchy. It's unlisted, so you learn it by stepping on it.

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We take work-life balance seriously.

Translation: We put a meditation app in the benefits portal and a 7 a.m. standing meeting on your calendar.

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Our people are our greatest asset.

Translation: Assets get depreciated on a schedule. So will you.

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We encourage healthy debate.

Translation: The debate ends when the senior person repeats their original position slightly louder.

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We have a no-blame culture.

Translation: We have a no-documentation culture. The blame still happens, just verbally and off the record.

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We offer unlimited PTO.

Translation: PTO with an invisible ceiling you locate by triggering the ambient disappointment.

Author Original

We promote from within.

Translation: We promoted twice from within in the last decade, and both stories are on the careers page.

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That's not who we are.

Translation: That is exactly who we are, and this incident made it visible to people outside the building.

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We're a data-driven organization.

Translation: We have dashboards. Decisions are still made by the loudest person in the room, who now points at a dashboard while making them.

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This will be our single source of truth.

Translation: The fourth single source of truth this year.

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We need better visibility.

Translation: I want a weekly report that I will read the morning of the meeting where you present it.

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Let's not boil the ocean.

Translation: Your proposal exceeds the amount of change I can personally sponsor without risk.

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We're aligned at the leadership level.

Translation: We had a meeting where nobody objected out loud.

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The numbers tell a story.

Translation: I have selected the numbers that tell my story.

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We measure what matters.

Translation: We measure what's easy to pull from the system we already bought, then declare that what matters.

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Everyone understands the strategy.

Translation: The strategy deck has been distributed. Comprehension was never verified, and questions were discouraged by the length of the meeting.

Author Original

It's a communication problem.

Translation: It's an incentive problem, but incentives have owners and communication doesn't.

Author Original

Let's take this offline.

Translation: Let's never speak of this again.

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We need to be more strategic.

Translation: Meaning unknown. Has scored well in performance reviews since 2009.

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The analysis is directionally correct.

Translation: Wrong, but from a distance and with momentum.

Author Original

The dashboard is the source of truth.

Translation: The dashboard is stale, three people have edit access, and one of them left in March. But it renders beautifully in the QBR.

Author Original

We're doubling down on analytics.

Translation: We hired one analyst and gave her four bosses.

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Garbage in, garbage out.

Translation: An excuse deployed exclusively after the garbage has come out, by the people who owned the intake.

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You'll have a dotted-line to the VP.

Translation: Two bosses, zero advocates.

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We're moving to a matrix organization.

Translation: Accountability has been diluted to the point where the post-mortem can't name anyone.

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We're standing up a center of excellence.

Translation: We relocated a problem so it would stop appearing in this org's metrics.

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We're reviewing spans of control.

Translation: We found the number of direct reports at which a manager stops managing and starts triaging, and we are about to exceed it.

Author Original

This role has a lot of cross-functional exposure.

Translation: You will be responsible for outcomes owned by people who don't report to you and don't return your Slacks.

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We're creating a new team to own this.

Translation: The three teams that partially own this will now be four teams that partially own this.

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You'll be the interim lead.

Translation: Permanent, unless it goes well and someone senior gets interested.

Author Original

We're hiring a Head of.

Translation: Manager without the compensation. Director without the authority. Enjoy the LinkedIn bump.

Author Original

We're flattening the org.

Translation: We removed a management layer and redistributed its workload to people who now do two jobs. The layer's compensation was not redistributed with it.

Author Original

We're adopting a best-in-class org design.

Translation: We copied the Spotify model from a 2012 blog post that Spotify has publicly disowned.

Author Original

The new structure will reduce dependencies.

Translation: The dependencies survived. They're just undocumented now, so they get resolved through friendship and guilt.

Author Original

You'll report to me for now.

Translation: I collected your team in the reorg and haven't decided whether you're staying.

Author Original

We need clearer swim lanes.

Translation: I want the parts of your job I like, formally transferred, in writing.

Author Original

This is a stretch role.

Translation: Two jobs, one salary, and the word 'growth' deployed as anesthetic.

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We're moving to a shared services model.

Translation: Nobody's problem is now everybody's ticket queue.

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We only hire the best.

Translation: We hire people who interview well, which correlates with confidence, which correlates with nothing.

Author Original

We'll circle back on compensation.

Translation: The budget was set before the req was posted. This conversation is decorative.

Author Original

We're looking for someone entrepreneurial.

Translation: No budget, no headcount, no roadmap. Bring your own resources and morale.

Author Original

He's a strong individual contributor.

Translation: We're about to ruin him with a team.

Author Original

She has executive presence.

Translation: She's tall, speaks in a low register, and agrees with the VP one beat before the VP finishes.

Author Original

We completed our annual talent review.

Translation: We put names in a nine-box grid based on vibes, then treated the grid as data.

Author Original

He's a low performer.

Translation: Sometimes an underperformer. Sometimes a strong performer attached to a broken system, scored on the system's output.

Author Original

We're managing him out.

Translation: We're making him miserable enough to quit so we can skip the severance and the conversation.

Author Original

We've placed her on a performance improvement plan.

Translation: A paper trail with a start date and a predetermined ending, administered as a surprise.

Author Original

There's no headcount for a backfill.

Translation: The work will be redistributed to the survivors, and the org chart will quietly absorb the evidence that it was ever one person's job.

Author Original

We want someone who can hit the ground running.

Translation: Onboarding does not exist. Documentation does not exist. Your predecessor left no notes, and we're hoping you won't notice for ninety days.

Author Original

The salary is competitive.

Translation: Competitive with our other offers, which nobody accepted either.

Author Original

We value potential over pedigree.

Translation: For junior roles. For senior roles we require ten years at a company you've heard of.

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We run 360 feedback.

Translation: Anonymous until the writing style gives it away, which it always does.

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He's very hands-on.

Translation: He does his old job and supervises yours.

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She needs to work on her influencing skills.

Translation: She was right, but the people she was right at outranked her.

Author Original

We promote based on impact.

Translation: We promote based on visible impact, which means impact adjacent to executives, which means proximity is the skill being measured.

Author Original

Attrition is healthy.

Translation: The people leaving are the ones with options. We've decided to read this as a filter instead of a signal.

Author Original

We're invested in your growth.

Translation: There's a conference budget. It's frozen. It has been frozen since the day it was announced.

Author Original

New grads bring fresh energy.

Translation: New grads bring lower salaries and don't know yet what's unusual here.

Author Original

We're shipping an MVP.

Translation: A finished product's expectations on a prototype's budget, judged at launch against neither.

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We're taking an agile approach.

Translation: There is no plan.

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We're pursuing a fast-follower strategy.

Translation: We were surprised.

Author Original

We had some scope creep.

Translation: What leadership calls it when they added the scope and you missed the date.

Author Original

The deadline is aggressive but achievable.

Translation: The deadline was chosen at an offsite before anyone scoped the work. Achievability was assessed by asking no one.

Author Original

We'll iterate after launch.

Translation: Version one is the final version. The team gets reassigned Tuesday.

Author Original

We need a quick win.

Translation: A project whose defining feature is that a specific executive can see it from where they sit.

Author Original

This should be a light lift.

Translation: A phrase spoken exclusively by people who will not be doing the lifting.

Author Original

Let's put a pin in it.

Translation: The pin is permanent. The board it's pinned to gets thrown out at the end of the year.

Author Original

We're resource-constrained.

Translation: We funded eleven priorities at 60 percent each and are surprised that zero have shipped.

Author Original

We held a blameless post-mortem.

Translation: A meeting where we agreed the process failed so that no person had to have failed, then changed nothing about the process.

Author Original

We documented the lessons learned.

Translation: A document that has never once been consulted before starting the identical project.

Author Original

That's slated for phase two.

Translation: A fictional container for every requirement cut from phase one. Phase two does not exist. It has never existed.

Author Original

We're de-scoping to hit the date.

Translation: We're shipping the demo and calling it the product.

Author Original

We need stakeholder alignment.

Translation: Fourteen people who can say no, zero who can say yes.

Author Original

It's on the roadmap.

Translation: It's in a spreadsheet titled 'roadmap.' The spreadsheet is aspirational fiction reviewed twice a year.

Author Original

We need an executive sponsor.

Translation: The project will die without a protector, which tells you the organization attacks its own projects.

Author Original

We're launching a pilot program.

Translation: A production system with no budget line, no owner, and a name that lets us abandon it without admitting failure.

Author Original

We're pivoting.

Translation: The thing we said would work didn't, and this sentence is doing a lot of severance-avoidance for the person who said it.

Author Original

We're doing a soft launch.

Translation: We're launching without telling anyone, so if it breaks, it never happened.

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Let's schedule a working session.

Translation: The meeting will produce a follow-up meeting. The follow-up will produce a deck. The deck will produce nothing.

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Got time for a quick sync?

Translation: Thirty minutes, no agenda, could have been a sentence.

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I want to be respectful of everyone's time.

Translation: Announced eleven minutes into the recap of the previous meeting.

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Per my last email.

Translation: I have written proof and I am this close to using it.

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Happy to discuss further.

Translation: Do not discuss this further.

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Great question.

Translation: A stalling noise. The answer does not exist and is being invented during this sentence.

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As a leadership team, we take full responsibility.

Translation: No specific person takes any specific responsibility. Watch: nothing will change and no one will leave.

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We hear you.

Translation: Acknowledgment has been performed. Please confuse it with action.

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Change is hard.

Translation: Deployed exclusively by the people who designed the change, about the people absorbing it.

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We're all in this together.

Translation: We are in the same weather. We are in very different boats.

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