Co-Founder @ The Creator Accelerator. Head of Content @ Chris Donnelly LTD. I talk about AI, Marketing & The Creator Economy

Yo,After 5+ years within the personal branding space. I've helped build and scale personal brands of all sizes from varying industries.Currently, I'm helping Chris Donnelly become the most recognised entrepreneur on the planet.2 years in, we've:- Grown on LinkedIn by 1 million followers (180k - 1.1 million)- Have achieved 400m+ views on LinkedIn - Grown on TikTok by 500,000 (200k - 750k+) - Grown on Instagram by 780,000 (0-780k+)- Have achieved 1 Bn Views across platformsAnd I'm also running the Creator Accelerator with him, so if you're looking to do something similar, join the Creator Accelerator ! Here's a bit of proof to help convince ya ;) Yinka generated over $400,000 in revenue directly attributable to LinkedIn and the TCA systems.Jeff sold $80,000 worth of his offers within the first few weeks of joining the cohort. He also generated 840 new leads and grew his profile by 273%.Christine made $52,000 in course revenue from LinkedIn in under two months, while growing from 6,000 to nearly 11,000 followers. She's now at 42,000.Jon told us he'd made "three absolutely huge sales this week for ongoing work that more than doubles my annual revenue and has easily paid for the course, many multiples of times over."Nimrita had an investor reach out after reading her content. Within three weeks of connecting, that investor wrote a cheque for 50% of her funding round.Farhoon launched a paid community and hit $10,000 MRR in just three weeks. 145 paying members with only 5 churns.Julia landed a $250,000 contract and was flown to NYC for high-value networking opportunitiesIf you want to know more... go here: https://thecreatoraccelerator.co.uk/Oh, and also I almost forgot, I do posting on LinkedIn too and have worked with some of my dream brands (woo), so if you're looking to collab, drop me a DM :DPeaceee 

Josh S.

Forget a £90,000 uni degree. 

Learn from these people instead: 

As we are now in 2026, it's time you refresh your feed! 

Here are 54 incredible creators
Who share genuinely insightful and actionable content. 

Drop them a follow here: 

Self Development:

Thomas Pearce
Dan Go
Mark Hyman, MD
Dr. Carolyn Frost
Dr. Neetu Johnson M.D.🧠🩺
Priyamvada S

Business Building:

Chris Donnelly
Matt Gray
Alex Hormozi
Leila Hormozi
Codie A. Sanchez
Dan Martell

Leadership:

Jen Blandos
Dora Vanourek
Mike Leber
Jill Avey
Eric Partaker
George Stern

Artificial Intelligence:

Greg Isenberg
Charlie Lass
Axelle Malek
Anisha Jain
Anna York
Adam Biddlecombe

Marketing:

Elfried Samba
Tom Pestridge
Timothy Armoo
Brianna Doe
Jo Bird ✨
Will McTighe

Career Progression:

Ashley Couto
Ford Coleman
Alec Rickard
Angela Lau
Natalia Cano
Linda Le🌻

📌 Reached the mention capacity
Check out the other creators I tagged in the comments !  

Now it's your turn...
Who's your fav creator on here?? 

Tag them in the comments below :) 

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Josh Sanders

This is the only cheat sheet you need for 2026... 

Here's how to steal it and achieve huge success: 

A masterclass of content from the main man Chris Donnelly 

The LinkedIn algorithm has evolved each year.

2024: The algorithm rewarded reach.
One strong post could land 1m views and 5K new followers.

2025: The game shifted.
Viral reach dipped and niche authority started winning.

2026: Growth is slower but more meaningful.
1,000 buyers > a million passive followers.

LinkedIn is still the best place to build and monetise an audience.

But the playbook has changed once again.

Here’s how to win on LinkedIn in 2026:

1. Get Clear on Your North Star

Why are you posting in the first place?
Example: More leads, higher revenue, less time spent selling.

2. Understand Your ICP

Who exactly are you here to serve?
List their biggest pain points—and how you solve them.

3. Lock In Your Content Pillars

Pick 5–7 topics you can post about often.
It sharpens your message and builds real authority.

4. Turn Your Profile Into a Sales Page

Your profile must turn views into action.
From the headline to the featured links—every detail matters.

5. Engage & Build Relationships

List 10–20 people in your niche.
Comment, support, and build real connections.

6. Map Your Content Funnel

Guide your audience from awareness to buying.

7. Generate Strong Content Ideas

→ Use tools like SayWhat to spot keyword trends
→ Track top creators for inspiration
→ Source ideas from Instagram, X, Pinterest

8. Nail the Writing & Visuals

Pair sharp scanable copy writing, 
With visuals that stop the scroll 

The most important thing is to keep adapting. 

Do not write about subjects, just to go viral...
Instead, experiment, measure and adjust the way you format. 

Because there's no point pushing water up a hill :D 

What differences have you noticed on LinekdIn in 2026? 
Let me know below ! 

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Master the Skill of Negotiation

How to Claim What You’re Worth

A hard truth about life:
Most people aren’t getting what they’re worth

The answer?
Negotiating for what you’re worth.

Those who learn to negotiate effectively:

↳ Earn more respect and recognition
↳ Secure better-paid opportunities
↳ Move forward faster in life

Start building your negotiation skills today
Download this cheatsheet now! 

Harvard's 6 Principles for Agreement:

1. Separate people from the issue
2. Focus on interests, not positions
3. Learn to manage emotions
4. Show genuine appreciation
5. Present your message positively
6. Step out of the action and reaction loop

Know which aspects of communication
To work on most:

↳ 7 percent is the words you say
↳ 38 percent is tone and pace
↳ 55 percent is body language

Identify the Zone of Possible Agreement
And start negotiating from there

Plus 6 extra tips to boost your skills! 

Remember this: 

Closed mouths rarely get fed
Ask for what you truly deserve.

What’s your number one tip for negotiating?
Share it in the comments below! 

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I joined Chris at 180k followers. We're now at 1.1 million. 

Here's the blueprint for what you need to know: 

Just comment "2026" and I'll personally send it to you ! 

These are the same foundational principles 
That in 2 years helped us: 

- Grow by 800k+ followers 
- Drive $10M revenue to our creator business 
- Help 600+ founders drive millions in revenue 
- Guide some of the fastest growing creators on the platform 
- Drive 100,000s of leads and attention to multiple businesses

It is the perfect resource for founders in 2026. 

If you're curious, here's a sneek peak: 

- The 4 post templates that consistently generate leads
- How to set your 2026 "why" and tie content to business goals
- How to find your ICP and what content actually lands with them
- The deplatforming strategy that keeps you safe from algorithm shifts
- Lead magnet to email flows that guide people towards your offer

You don't need a team or years of figuring it out.
You need the right positioning, post strategy, and engagement system.

AND when you grab The 2026 LinkedIn Bible...

You'll also get an invite to Lead Generation Live. 

Which imo will be one of the best events to join this year!  

It's a free 4-hour masterclass with some seriously respected entrepreneurs:

Daniel Priestley (Entrepreneur and author of "Key Person of Influence")
Nathan Barry (Founder of Kit)
Sara Davies MBE (Founder of Crafter's Companion and Dragon's Den investor)
Eric Partaker (CEO Coach of the Year with 1.1M LinkedIn followers)

Remember for all of this, you just have to comment "2026" 
And I'll ping you a link in the comments. 

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In 2026 LinkedIn has changed... again. 

And those who don't keep up will get left behind. 

Awesome algo summary from Chris Donnelly here 🔥

After analysing 329,504 LinkedIn posts, they've got the answers. 

(Let's face it is the closest we'll get to a generalised algo answer) 

If you want to see attention, you must know what's changed.
And LinkedIn users are craving value and substance... a lot.

Here’s how to win on LinkedIn in 2026:

1. Building a brand
2025: Go broad to grow fast.
2026: Go deep to build trust.

2. Writing hooks
2025: Contrarian for the sake of it.
2026: Proof, stories, and results win.

3. Comments that convert
2025: “More comments = better.”
2026: Comments from respected voices matter most.

4. Going viral
2025: Top 1% posts explode reach.
2026: Viral posts get 80% less reach than last year.

(But you can still grow your business and following...)

5. Carousels still crush
2025: Teach to educate.
2026: Tell stories to connect.

6. Emojis
2025: Screams AI.
2026: Used to break up heavy text 

7. Lead magnets
2025: Playbooks and PDFs.
2026: GPTs are outperforming.

8. Ending with questions
2025: Every post must end with one.
2026: Only ask if you care about the answer.

9. Video
2025: Used for reach.
2026: Best for trust and product clarity.

10. Single images
2025: Motivational fluff.
2026: Use ones that surprise or show authority.

11 Hashtags
Still useless XD

You can still grow fast on LinkedIn.
In fact, top creators are still adding 1,000+ followers per week.

But you need to play the new game.

Also if you want more depth on this, 
Chris Donnelly and Will McTighe will be running a whole webinar to show you everything. 

Sign yourself up here: https://bit.ly/4jtwmkd

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2025 LinkedIn vs 2026 LinkedIn 

95% of creators struggle to grow on LinkedIn. 

The reason? Not understanding psychology. 

After growing from 5 to 115k in 14 months. 
I've become accustomed to what works. 

Most posts don't lack the value.
But they are not written for impact. 

The truth is:

Your content is competing for attention.
And the right psychology can make all the difference.

Here’s what works:

Cut the fat → Simplicity beats complexity.
Start with the negative → Urgency makes people take notice.
Stand out with numbers → The right figures disrupt the scroll.
Sell with transformation → Show the journey, not just the result.

And that’s just the start.

There are also 12 bonus growth hacks in here.
That can help you get more engagement today.

Remember: 

You are writing for humans. 
Not for robots. 
(yet) 

What's one other psychological principle you use in your writing? 

If you're interested in learning more. 
Chris Donnelly will be covering something very similar tomorrow ! 

It's Lead Generation Live :D

4 hours with incredible guests like:

1. Eric Partaker 
2. Sara Davies MBE
3. Daniel Priestley 
4. Nathan Barry

If you're a founder, it will be one of the best things you can watch...
To drive significant traffic and leads in 2026. 

Grab your spot here: https://bit.ly/3LyY0zu

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Big personal announcement... 

I recorded my first podcast :o 

Buzzing to announce I went on The Creator Playbook by Callum Mcdonnell 

If you want to check it out, go here: https://lnkd.in/eBTGp5Fy

For those looking for a sneak peak...

Here's what I run over: 

- The Power of LinkedIn for Business Growth
- Setting Clear Goals and Content Pillars
- Optimising Your LinkedIn Profile
- Engaging with Your Network and Building Relationships
- Creating High-Impact Content
- Analysing and Adapting Content Strategies
- Leveraging Lead Magnet Posts for Engagement
- Driving Conversations and Engagement on LinkedIn
- Crafting Effective Hooks and Content Structure
- The Science Behind High-Performing LinkedIn Posts
- Tracking Performance Metrics on LinkedIn

+ much more 👀 

I've always been a big fan of the Creator Playbook interviews, 
So to come on and share my journey was awesome.

Should I do more podcasts?? 

I've been avoiding them for so long, but this was so much fun ! 

Let me know what you think down below !

Yesterday was insane... 5k+ people on call

AND some of the best entrepreneures in the world. 

If you didn't catch it, yesterday we ran our first big online event: 
Lead Generation Live. 

The goal? 
Provide as much value as physically possible to founders. 

And we had some incredible guests to help us do that, such as: 

Daniel Priestley
Nathan Barry
Sara Davies MBE
Eric Partaker

To be honest I was bricking it with this many people coming on live. 
But the team smashed it out the park and it ran so smooth :o 

(s/out Jacob H. and Megan Robinson - the best in the gameee) 

My favourite part was hearing the feedback from people. 
Some said it's been the best live webinar they've ever been to (like whatt) 

Genuinely made my week. 

We even sold all our discounted seats for The Creator Accelerator by Chris Donnelly
Which was not expected at all ! 

Due to this, we only have limited seats left for the new founders edition cohort. 

As a reminder, in the TCA you’ll learn how to:

✅ Understand how to create outsized financial return
✅ Drive business revenue and generate leads consistently
✅ Rapidly grow your audience & build systems to automate growth

It's basically everything on how we built Chris audience to 3M+, 
All whilst he ran multiple businesses, turning over $10M ARR. 

We’ll cover everything:

💡 Week 0: The big picture: mindset, leverage, systems
💡 Week 1-5: Profile optimisation, content writing/design, and using AI
💡 Week 6-10: Email, lead gen, monetisation, and social selling 
💡 Bonus modules: Video, webinars, monetising your audience at scale

And you'll get access to: 

- Live coaching 4x a week.
- Guest masterclasses 
- A thriving community
- 100+ templates
- The best tools with discounts and tutorials 
- Intimate coach-led clinics

As well as a brand new bonus stack which is: 

✅ Creator OS ($99): The system for managing your content
✅ Digital Business Blueprint ($999): 10-week program on building a high-leverage digital business with 10 modules and actionable assignments
✅ All our GPTs ($297): Every GPT we use daily
✅ Chris Coach AI ($999): An AI coach trained on all of my knowledge

If you'd like to secure your spot
Check the link below: https://bit.ly/3YsY4Uz

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I took 1 week off posting on LinkedIn 

And you'll never guess what happened... 

Nothing. Nothing Happened XD 

It's so easy to feel consistent pressure to post on here.
In fact, we deeply encourage people to post daily. 

However, it's all down to how it relates to your goals. 

If the goal is to rapidly grow and scale your brand... 
Post daily. 

For me, I want to keep up consistency throughout the year
Whilst building the best educational business possible with Chris 

This is typically very high in intensive work. 
So I need the odd week off to refresh and recover ! 

And I just came off of a promotion period for the The Creator Accelerator by Chris Donnelly 
I had worked harder than ever before. 

Here are the stats for those interested hehe

In 60 days we managed to: 

- Generate 20,000+ leads
- Rack up 10M+ Views across platforms 
- Have our largest ever online event (5,000 +) 
- Sell out the cohort with 136 incredible founders 

All whilst keeping Chris' brand integrity
And allowing consistent awareness & lead flow for Searchable

But after some sheer grinding, I needed some time off screens. 

So I went to the beautiful Slovenia with my gf Lola. 

We explored the Postojna caves, Lake Bled and Ljubljana Castle
(Whilst not dying driving on the right hand side up mountains 😂)

It was exactly what I needed. 

So if you're burning low... 
Remember you should only continue posting if it aligns with your goals. 

This is a long game people ! 

What did I miss over the last week??

In 10 days time we go live with The Creator Accelerator by Chris Donnelly

And this entirely different... 

18 months ago myself and Chris Donnelly made a critical decision. 
To show the actual methods for growing a highly profitable personal brand. 

At the time, we had grown Chris' account from 180k to 650k in just 6 months. 
And this growth drove monumental opportunity for us. 

Our goal was simple, find the formats that led to outsized distribution 
Whilst keeping positioning strong and a true founder brand. 

We also partnered with saywhat.ai ensuring that strategy was backed by data.
And LeverBrands who are always on top of what's working ! 

This resulted in: 

- Some of the fastest growing creators world wide on LinkedIn
- Millions of revenue generated
- A community of incredible people sharing wins daily (makes me so happy) 

But we've made one big change going into 2026...

We are focussing purely on founders. 
Placing all emphasis on lead generation and driving outsized business returns. 

Why? 

Reach on LinkedIn has dropped significantly. 
But it is still one of the best platforms for marketing your business 

(Through your personal brand of course). 

We've seen this primarily in the last 30 days. 
Driving 35,000+ leads with carefully designed lead magnets. 

So we've gone all in. 

We've restructured our entire educational modules. 
Included brand new ones on funnel optimisation and social selling. 

And have created our best bonus stack yet...

Those who buy this time round get access to: 

- A Free Creator OS ($99) - The system for managing your content
- A Free Digital Business Blueprint ($999) - 10 week course on how to build a digital business
- All our GPTS ($297) - All of the GPTs we use on a daily basis
- The first ever Chris Coach AI ($999) 

We start in 10 days and I am so excited ! 

There are already some incredible founders in the wait space already :) 

If you're looking to drive more attention to your business,
Secure your spot here: https://bit.ly/3YsY4Uz

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These GPTs contain 1000+ hours of LinkedIn knowledge. 

And I'm giving you them for FREE:

Comment CUSTOM, and I will personally send them all to you.

Most people use GPT as a chat bot...
But GPTs can be far more effective when it comes to: 

- Strategy
- Ideas 
- Feedback

Especially if it's had the right training 👀

Ours have been trained across 300,000+ posts across all different industries. 

They have helped us drive 100M+ views. 
And supported us driving significant revenue. 

The 4 GPTs are:

📊 The LinkedIn Algorithm Expert
💡 The Viral LinkedIn Idea Generator
🪝 The Scroll Stopping Hook Generator
💰 The High-Converting Lead Gen Generator

With all of these, you can essentially:

1. Ensure every single post is optimised for the latest algorithm updates.
2. Come up with viral post ideas in seconds. 
3. Generate hooks that stop the scroll.
4. Generate dozens of leads per post.

You basically have a full LinkedIn content team at your disposal. 

Again, I repeat, for free.

Start using them, I promise you won't regret it.

As a bonus, everyone who grabs the GPTs will get a seat for the incredible lead gen live !

Which is a 4 hour lead gen masterclass by Chris Donnelly + incredible guests! 

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Since going through The Creator Accelerator by Chris Donnelly

Michael Lovegrove made an astonishing $200,000.

And most of that came from LinkedIn.

Michael runs Snowballn', where he helps people build powerful sales engines.

He joined TCA wanting to grow on LinkedIn
But had no clear plan on how to get there.

A few weeks in, everything changed.

✅ Landed his first brand deal
✅ Scored multiple paid speaking gigs
✅ Doubled his follower count
✅ Grew his newsletter to 1,000+
✅ Launched his first digital product and started earning

But here's the real win:
He learned how to run a proper accelerator.

That alone helped him 10x the price of his own sales program.

(Always good to be used as a success story.)

Then he launched Sollo, a lead-gen CRM for solopreneurs.
Built a 100-person waitlist before it even went live.

And all of it?
Driven by his LinkedIn content and email list.

In Michael’s words:
"This is far more than just a LinkedIn course. It's probably the best investment you can make outside of starting your own business."

And this means a lot because it's exactly what we aim for. 

The TCA is about building a content-led business that runs across platforms
And brings in real, long-term revenue.

Michael didn’t just learn how to post better.
He learned how to turn attention into income.

If you're a founder who wants to use LinkedIn as a growth engine,
Cohort 6 starts in just ONE DAY. 

We are down to the last few seats now. 
So if you’re serious, now’s the time to act.

600+ people have already built thriving businesses from what we teach.
This could be the moment things shift for you in 2026.

Secure your spot hereee: https://bit.ly/3YsY4Uz

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300km ran in 30 days, with £1285 raised! 

The end of 2025 was brutal... 

But it changed my mind on one main thing. 
That relates to a lot of areas in life. 

There mental barriers we attach to ourselves on a faily basis. 
Are often compeltely wrong. 

When I first started this challenge, I wasn't sure if it was possible for me. 
I was frightened of injuries as I'd never ran a back to back 10k. 

But I knew deep down I had to finish it. 

So I prioritied mobility and simply put the reps in. 
And surprisingly my body adapted (even got a PB on the last day) 

So now my goal for 2026? 
Really question if that barrier I've built up is actually there. 

You are often capable of so much more than you think ! 

So next time you're: 

- Doubting your beliefs on a project 
- Worried to apply for a job your not as qulaified for
- Holding off starting that business you've always wanted
 
I encourage you to truly question of that belief of:
"I'm not good enough". 

Because most of the time, that's the thing that stops people. 

Happy new year legends !

Very excited for the year ahead :)

We've helped 100s of founders make millions in TCA.

This is exactly what to expect from the program: 

Cohort 6 officially starts in just 2 days, 
And the response has blown us away. 

We’ve already helped over 600+ people across 5 cohorts, 
And have over 100 on board for TCA 6. 

If you’ve been wavering, this is your sign to act. 

In the 10-week program, you’ll learn how to:

✅ Rapidly grow your audience & build systems to automate growth
✅ Drive business revenue and generate leads consistently
✅ Understand how to create outsized financial return

It’s the exact system we used to scale Chris audience to 3M+, 
All whilst running multiple businesses, turning over $10M ARR. 

We’ll cover everything:

💡 Week 0: The big picture: mindset, leverage, systems
💡 Week 1-5: Profile optimisation, content writing/design, and using AI
💡 Week 6-10: Email, lead gen, monetisation, and social selling 
💡 Bonus modules: Video, webinars, monetising your audience at scale

And you'll get access to: 

- Live coaching 4x a week.
- Guest masterclasses 
- A thriving community
- 100+ templates
- The best tools with discounts and tutorials 
- Intimate coach-led clinics

+ a whole lot more ! 

I could go on and on about how valuable this program is, 
But I think it's better if you hear it from the alumni themselves. 

The carousel is packed with feedback and testimonials, 
But you can also reach out to our students with questions ! 

When it comes to cost, this is not a casual commitment. 
You get what you pay for, and we're delivering real value here. 

The investment from your side is: 

A $5,850 one-time payment

OR 

3 monthly payments of $2,166.67 

It's an investment, but one that will hold you accountable. 
Plus, we can't reasonably offer this much value at a lower price. 

You'll have live webinars with some of the world's top entrepreneurs, 
And learn a system that can literally earn you millions in revenue. 

(If you ask our students, I think they'll agree it's worth it.)  

TCA has been such an important part of our lives in the last year. 
But it didn't turn out exactly as we expected... 

We assumed the knowledge would be the most important part. 

But it’s become a community that holds each other to a high standard, 
And pushes each other to build and learn at a rigorous pace. 

And, because everyone is bringing their A-game, 
We see business partnerships and friendships form in every cohort. 

Building a personal brand is the best source of leverage for any founder. 

But it's the network you'll have access to that will be life-changing. 

If you're a founder who's ready to transform your life for good...
We go live in just 2 days (January 19). 

We've never had a cohort fill up this fast, so I advise you to act quickly. 

Apply now before it’s too late 👇

https://bit.ly/3YsY4Uz

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What you'll learn in TCA 6 - Chris Donnelly

Just weeks into joining The Creator Accelerator by Chris Donnelly...

Hayden Swerling closed a £165K consulting deal.

So many creators give up way too soon.
They post without direction, then quit when the likes don’t land.

Hayden did the opposite... and it worked.
(Feel free to message him yourself.)

🎨 He shared value-packed content (great writing + design)
✍️ Tailored every post with his ideal client in mind
📈 Fine-tuned everything for max visibility

And the payoff?

✅ 87% growth in 10 weeks
✅ £165,000 consulting deal signed
✅ 5 sponsored content pieces with an HR firm

This is what we teach inside The Creator Accelerator:

– How to write content that attracts high-ticket leads
– How to build a brand that pulls clients in daily
– How to streamline your content with smart systems

Cohort 6 kicks off in 4 days!! 
And this is the final chance to jump in.

We’ve already got 80+ brilliant founders onboard
Working through the pre-cohort materials right now.

But let’s be clear: this isn’t a plug-and-play solution.
It’s built for founders who aren’t afraid of putting in the work.

You’ll be pushed.
It’ll challenge you massively.

But if you show up like Hayden did,
This is the kind of outcome you can expect.

And the community inside will raise your game as well ! 

For those who join this week, we’ve added our best early bonus stack yet:

✅ Creator OS ($99): The full content management system
✅ Digital Business Blueprint ($999): Our flagship 10-week business builder
✅ All our GPTs ($297): Every GPT we use daily
✅ Chris Coach AI ($999): AI mentor trained on my own knowledge

All completely free...

That’s over $2,500 of extra resources, just for early action takers.

This is the 6th time we’re running this.
And it’s shaping up to be the most popular cohort so far.

If you want in secure your place: https://bit.ly/3YsY4Uz

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Fractional CIO & Strategic Advisor | Fixing IT Bottlenecks, Building High-Trust Tech Foundations | Scaled Orgs from $0 to $3B+

Strategic IT Leadership for Growing Companies

Helping non-technical founders and small business leaders scale without getting slowed down by their own systems

The Problem
Most companies don’t fail because they dream too small.
They fail because their technology trips them up before they ever hit full speed.

Systems that don’t talk to each other

Vendors that overpromise and underdeliver

Teams that pull in different directions

Operational chaos hidden behind "we’ll fix it later"

Growth without fundamentals isn't a shortcut—it's a detour. Real business expansion is about building systems that scale with integrity, not just adding layers of complexity to a shaky core.

The Outcome
I help you build a stronger, smarter, simpler technology foundation — one that scales with your business, not against it.

✅ Faster operations
✅ Smarter use of tools and teams
✅ Fewer expensive mistakes
✅ A clear, flexible roadmap for growth
✅ More time spent leading — less time fighting fires

My Approach
I’m not here to sell you systems you don’t need or waste months writing strategy decks nobody reads.

I’m here to help you:

Fix what’s broken (before it costs you real money)

Align your people, process, and platforms (so they work together, not against each other)

Build momentum you can actually feel (and measure in real-world results)

I bring 30 years of hands-on experience building and scaling IT in organizations that grew from to over $3B — many times as the very first IT hire, often leading global distributed teams.

What you get is simple:
Real strategy. Real execution. Real growth.

No bloat. No buzzwords. No bureaucratic nonsense.

Services
Fractional CIO Leadership
Part-time executive leadership to align your tech and business strategy, manage vendors, and build internal capabilities without hiring a full-time CIO.

Project Rescue and Turnaround
When critical projects stall, I step in to realign teams, simplify the chaos, and deliver results.

Vendor and System Sourcing
Find the right systems and partners that fit your business — not someone else’s template.

Strategic IT Roadmapping
Clear, practical roadmaps that connect today’s actions to tomorrow’s growth.

Who I Work Best With
Founders and business leaders who:

Are serious about scaling

Know tech is crucial but don’t want to live inside it

Value momentum over perfection

Want a partner who talks business, not just tech

Ready to Clear the Bottlenecks and Build What's Next?
Let's start with a simple conversation.
No sales pitch. Just clarity on where you are — and what’s possible next.

Phillip R. Kennedy

They sat in architecture meetings, silent, watching me design their systems.

I thought I was helping.

Three years into my VP of Engineering role, I was solving every hard problem myself. Reviewing every architectural decision. Jumping into every code review with a better approach.

We shipped on time. Systems stayed stable. I was crushing it.

Then I noticed something.

Standups had become status reports. Code reviews had become lectures. Engineers stopped proposing solutions. They'd wait for mine.

One afternoon, I asked a senior engineer what she thought about an integration approach. She shrugged.

"You're going to redesign it anyway. Just tell me what you want."

That landed like a punch.

I wasn't building engineers. I was building dependency.

Every problem I solved was a problem someone else didn't learn to solve. Every decision I made was a decision someone else didn't learn to make. My speed had become their ceiling.

Here's what doesn't get talked about enough in technical leadership:

The skills that got you promoted are the skills you now have to stop using.

You were promoted for solving. Now your job is to stop solving so others can start.

That's not intuitive. Solving feels productive. Stepping back feels like abandoning your team. Your identity is wrapped around being the one who knows.

Letting go of that is harder than any technical problem I've faced.

But here's what changed when I did:

I stopped answering and started asking. "What would you try?" before offering my solution. "Help me understand your approach" before suggesting changes. "Who has thoughts on this?" and then actually waiting through the uncomfortable silence.

The silence is where growth happens. I had to learn to stop filling it.

Six months later, that senior engineer who'd given up on proposing ideas? She architected a system I couldn't have designed myself. Because she'd finally had space to think.

The job went from being the technical oracle to being the person who helps brilliant engineers trust their own judgment.

I build less now. We ship more.

Trust scales better than talent.

I wish someone had told me that three years earlier.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've made this shift

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on leading without being the bottleneck

Fractional CIO & Strategic Advisor | Helping Non-Technical Leaders Make Technical Decisions | Scaled Orgs from $0 to $3B+

I asked him about his best manager.

Strong candidate. Decade of experience. We were halfway through the interview.

He paused. Then he told me about a VP of Engineering from eight years ago.

Not her technical skills. Not her architecture decisions. Not the systems she'd built.

He told me about a 3 AM incident.

His son's first travel baseball tournament was that Saturday. Months of early morning practices. The kid had finally made the starting lineup. Dad had promised he'd be there.

Thursday night, 2 AM, production went down. Major outage. All hands situation.

He was halfway through his second Red Bull when the VP showed up in the incident channel.

"I've got this. Go home. Get some sleep. Be at that game."

He pushed back. Felt guilty. The system was still down.

She wasn't having it.

"I've handled worse. Your son is nine once. Go."

He went. Slept four hours. Made the game. Watched his kid get his first hit.

The VP handled the incident herself. Twelve hours of firefighting. She mentioned it once the following Monday, almost in passing. No guilt trip. No scorecard. Just "we got it fixed, here's what we learned."

That was eight years ago. He's worked at three companies since.

He still tells that story.

Not the deployment metrics from that quarter. Not the sprint velocity. Not the uptime percentage.

The 3 AM moment when someone chose his family over a dashboard.

Here's what I've learned watching technical leaders for twenty years:

The metrics fade. The moments stay.

I've seen leaders with perfect delivery records whose teams couldn't wait to leave. I've seen leaders with messy quarters whose engineers followed them to their next three companies.

The difference was never the dashboards.

It was whether they shielded their team from chaos that wasn't theirs to carry. Whether they fought for the refactoring time that product wanted to skip. Whether they backed their engineers' judgment when an executive questioned a decision. 

Whether they remembered that the people writing the code had lives outside the code.

The VP my candidate talked about? She probably doesn't remember that night. One incident among hundreds.

He'll remember it forever.

That's the thing about technical leadership. You rarely know which moments matter until someone tells you years later.

A decade from now, nobody will remember your sprint velocity.

They'll remember whether you treated them like resources to optimize or people worth protecting.

The candidate took the job.

He's still there. Four years later.

Still telling that story about the VP and the baseball game.

Be the leader they mention at their next three companies.

The one who showed them what leadership looks like when nobody's measuring.

♻️ Repost and comment if you remember a leader who showed up when it mattered

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on technical leadership that outlasts the metrics

He took the blame for a deployment failure he didn't cause.

A junior engineer had pushed a config change that brought down production. The VP of Engineering knew exactly what happened. So did the team. So did the executives demanding answers.

In the incident review, he said: "This was a process failure. I should have caught it. Here's what I'm changing."

He never named the engineer.

That engineer is now a Staff Developer. She's told me that moment changed how she leads her own team.

That's invisible leadership. The kind that never shows up on a performance review. The kind that builds something you can't measure but can always feel.

I've watched technical leaders for twenty years. The ones people actually want to follow rarely match the stereotype. They're not the smartest in the room. They're not the ones with the most impressive architecture on their resume.

They're the ones who do these things when no one's watching:

Take the 2 AM page so their team can sleep. Block unrealistic deadlines in rooms their engineers never see. Let someone else present the design they built together. Hire people who might outshine them, then celebrate when those people get recruited away.

If everything goes right, they give away all the credit.

If everything goes wrong, they take the blame.

Sound exhausting? It is. Sound thankless? Often.

So why do it?

Because leadership isn't about you. It's about what happens to the people around you.

The engineer who takes a risk because she knows someone has her back. The team that innovates because failure won't mean humiliation. The culture where people stay not because of stock options, but because they feel seen.

You can't build that with authority. You can only build it with trust. And trust comes from a thousand small moments where you choose the team over yourself.

Here's what I've learned:

The technical leaders who struggle most are the ones still trying to be the smartest person in the room. They were promoted for expertise. They built their identity on knowing the answer.

But leadership isn't about having answers. It's about creating space for others to find them.

That requires letting go. Of credit. Of control. Of being the hero.

It's a harder transition than any technology migration.

Would you still lead if no one ever knew your name?

The answer to that question determines what kind of leader you'll become.

Start small. Take the blame once when it's not your fault. Give credit when it is. Block one unreasonable demand so your team never has to hear about it.

Leadership is a practice, not a position.

It's a choice you make every day.

Make it today.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've worked with someone like this

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on technical leadership that earns trust

A recruiter asked if I knew any AI experts.

"How do you define AI expert?" I asked.

"Someone who's used ChatGPT for six months."

That's not an expert. That's a customer.

We're watching the same movie we watched in 2012. Remember when everyone was suddenly a "social media expert" because they had a Facebook account? Same energy. Different rectangle.

Every resume I see now has AI somewhere. "AI-savvy leader." "Experienced with AI tools." "Passionate about AI."

Cool. So is my brother. He uses ChatGPT to write fishing emails. He's not updating his LinkedIn about it.

Here's the spectrum nobody wants to acknowledge:

AI User: You chat with Claude. Generate images with Midjourney. Use Copilot to debug code. This is digital literacy. It's table stakes. It's being good at Google in 2010. Not a skill. An expectation.

AI Practitioner: You've shipped something. Built a workflow that actually runs in production. Made architectural decisions about which model to use and why. Measured whether it worked. This belongs on your resume.

AI Expert: You build systems. Fine-tune models. Make decisions other engineers depend on. People pay you for your judgment, not your prompts. This is an identity, not a bullet point.

Most people are users cosplaying as practitioners.

The honest test: Can you explain what you built, how it works, and what business problem it solved?

Not "I use AI daily."
Not "I'm really good at prompting."
Not "I generated our marketing images."

Those are tool usage. I know eleven-year-olds that use AI daily. They're not adding it to their resume.

What actually counts:

"Built an AI chatbot that reduced support tickets 30%."
"Integrated Claude API into our workflow, saving the team fifteen hours weekly."
"Fine-tuned a model for our specific domain because the base model couldn't handle our edge cases."

Specific. Measurable. Actually built.

The hype will settle. It always does.

When it does, the people who shipped things will be hiring the people who talked about shipping things.

Pick which side of that conversation you want to be on.

And maybe take "AI Expert" off your headline if your expertise is typing questions into a chat box.

The hype fades. The work stays.

Make sure you have some.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've interviewed an "AI expert" whose expertise was typing questions

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on building real technical credibility that survives the hype cycle

$640K in engineering time. Launched on time. Under budget. 3% adoption.

Nobody called it a failure because it shipped.

A CTO I work with spent nine months building a customer portal. His team hit every milestone. The all-hands demo got applause. Two months after launch, almost nobody had logged in. Support tickets hadn't moved. Sales couldn't point to a single deal it influenced.

Nine months of building. Solving a problem that didn't exist.

The meeting that started it was eleven months earlier. VP of Sales mentions a competitor has a portal. A few heads nod. Someone says "we should probably have that too."

The CTO asks the right question: "What problem would it solve?"

"Customer self-service. Reduces support load. Makes us look modern."
Sounds reasonable. Gets added to the roadmap. Three weeks later it has a team, a timeline, and enough momentum that stopping feels harder than continuing.

Nobody checked if customers were actually asking for it. Nobody measured real support costs. Nobody pinned down what "look modern" means in revenue.

They built a solution and went looking for the problem afterward.

He told me he felt it around month four. Usage projections kept sliding. Customer interviews were thin. But the project had executive visibility now. Stopping meant explaining why they'd started. Easier to ship and hope adoption would follow.

It didn't.

I've watched this same pattern at six different companies. The projects that quietly drain organizations aren't the dramatic failures. Those get autopsied. Lessons get documented. Someone writes a postmortem.

The real damage comes from the successes that never mattered. They ship, so nobody examines them. They consume capacity, so other things don't get built. They sit on roadmaps as proof the team is "executing" while actual problems go unsolved.

Your job as a technical leader isn't building everything that gets requested. It's protecting your team from building things that don't matter.

That means asking what breaks if you don't build it. Not only what improves. What actually breaks. If the answer is nothing, you're looking at a nice-to-have in a strategy costume.

That means knowing what you're not building when you say yes. That portal cost nine months. Nine months of not fixing the performance issues that drove their largest customer to start evaluating competitors.

Shipping isn't success. Mattering is.

The best technical leaders aren't just the best builders. They're the ones who know which buildings shouldn't be built.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've shipped something successful that shouldn't have existed

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on knowing when not to build

"This is high priority."

I watched a VP send this message to five engineers.

What they heard:

Engineer 1: Drop everything. Do it now.
Engineer 2: Move it up the list. Handle it this week.
Engineer 3: Important, but she says that about everything.
Engineer 4: Add it to the backlog. She'll follow up if it's real.
Engineer 5: Reply "got it" and wait for clarification.

Same message. Five interpretations. One very confused sprint.

"Priority" doesn't mean anything. Neither does "ASAP." Neither does "time-sensitive" or "urgent" or "when you get a chance."

These words feel like communication. They're actually the absence of it.

Here's what happens:

You send "this is urgent" because you're stressed.
They receive "this is urgent" and have to guess what you mean.

Do you mean today? This hour? Before the 3pm meeting? Before end of quarter?

They don't know. So they either panic unnecessarily or ignore it entirely.

Both outcomes are your fault.

A Director I worked with wondered why his team never hit the "right" priorities. I asked him to show me his last ten Slack messages.

"High priority."
"Please prioritize."
"This is time-sensitive."
"Need this ASAP."
"Urgent."

His team had learned that "urgent" meant "he's stressed" not "this actually matters."

So they pattern-matched. Waited to see which "urgent" things he followed up on. Those were the real priorities. The rest was noise.

He'd trained them to ignore him without realizing it.

The fix is almost embarrassingly simple:

Replace "ASAP" with an actual time.

Not: "Need this ASAP." But: "Need this by 3pm today."
Not: "This is a priority." But: "Do this first. Then the API work. Then the backlog items."
Not: "Time-sensitive." But: "If you only do one thing today, do this."

Specific beats urgent every time.

The engineers I respect most do something else too. They name what can wait.

"I need the auth fix by Thursday. The dashboard updates can wait until next sprint."

That single sentence does more than a hundred "ASAP" messages. It tells your team where to focus and where to relax.

Clarity is kindness. Vagueness creates anxiety you never see.

Your team isn't ignoring your priorities.

They just can't read your mind.

Stop making them guess.

♻️ Repost and comment if your Slack is full of "urgent" messages that aren't

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on leading without accidentally training your team to ignore you

The answer to your biggest problem is sitting in someone's head three desks away.

They're not hiding it.

They just stopped telling you.

A VP called me last month. Deadlines slipping. Morale tanking. He'd tried new processes, better tools, more standups. Nothing worked.

I talked to his team. Twenty minutes with a senior engineer and I had the answer.

"We told him this six months ago. He said we'd revisit it later. We stopped bringing it up."

A legacy API broke constantly. Every sprint collapsed when it went down. The team knew. They'd documented it. Raised it in retros. Written it up with estimated fix time.

The VP never heard it. Not really.

Here's what happened:

Engineer mentioned it in a 1:1. VP was distracted by a CEO escalation. Said "let's table that for now."

Engineer heard: "This isn't important."

VP heard himself say: "We'll come back to this."

One conversation. Two completely different memories.

This is how you lose access to what your team knows.

Not through one big dismissal. Through a thousand small moments.

The retro where you checked your phone. The suggestion you said "interesting" to and never mentioned again. The problem you called "technical debt" that turned out to be existential.

Your team is pattern matching. They're always pattern matching.

The pattern says: bringing this up won't change anything.

So they stop. Not dramatically. They just get quieter. Proposals get shorter. Eventually they sit in meetings with answers you need and don't offer them.

They're not hiding information.

They've learned you're not really asking.

The VP fixed the API in three weeks once he finally heard the problem. Three weeks. His team had been drowning for six months.

"I thought I was listening," he told me. "I was just waiting for my turn to talk."

Your team has answers you need. Right now. Today.

The question is whether you've built the kind of silence where they'll actually tell you.

Next 1:1, try this: "What's something you've stopped bringing up because it didn't seem like I was hearing it?"

Then wait. Ten seconds of silence feels like forever.

That's where the truth lives.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've been the engineer waiting to be heard

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on leadership that actually listens

You'd get paged at 2 AM if a service degraded 5%.

Your career could drift for five years. No alert. No dashboard. No incident review.

Just a slow Tuesday that turns into a slow decade.

I pointed this out to a VP of Engineering last year. He'd just shown me his infrastructure. Monitoring for every service. Alerting tuned to catch problems before users noticed. Capacity planning projections through next year.

Beautiful systems.

Then I asked about his career plan.

Long pause. Slight panic.

"I'm kind of figuring it out as I go."

Sir. You have redundancy for a payments service that processes twelve transactions a day. And your career strategy is vibes?

He laughed. Then stopped laughing.

This is everywhere. World-class systems thinkers who apply zero systems thinking to themselves.

You'd never run production without monitoring. Your career has no early warning system.

You'd never ship without a rollback plan. Your career has no redundancy if this role evaporates.

You'd never let a service drift without SLOs. Your own growth has no measurable objectives.

You build alerting for services. Not for yourself.

Here's why: production gives you feedback. Career drift doesn't page you. It just feels like a slow Tuesday. For years.

A Director I know discovered this after a reorg eliminated his role. Fifteen years of experience. Zero visibility outside his company. Nine months to find his next job.

"I had monitoring for services that didn't matter and zero observability into my own career. That's insane when I say it out loud."

It is insane. It's also normal.

What changes when you apply systems thinking to yourself:

You build monitoring. Quarterly check: Am I learning? Am I visible? Am I building relationships outside these walls?

You create redundancy. Network beyond your company. Skills beyond your current role. If this job disappears tomorrow, what catches you?

You define SLOs. Not "grow more." Specific: three external conversations monthly, one public post weekly, one new domain quarterly.

Takes an hour every three months.

You build systems because drift is the default.

The question isn't whether you're technical enough.

It's why your career is the one system you forgot to build.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've been running on vibes

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on technical leadership that compounds

Your resume is about to become a conversation between two AIs.

Neither of them is you.

A friend runs talent acquisition at a mid-sized SaaS company. Last month she told me her team stopped reading resumes. Not reduced. Stopped. An AI screens applications, scores candidates, and surfaces the top fifteen for human review. The humans look at LinkedIn profiles, GitHub contributions, and anything the person has written or built publicly.

The resume is just the ticket to get processed. The decision happens somewhere else.

This is already normal. It's about to be universal.

Think about what's coming. AI writes your resume, optimized for the job description. AI on the other side parses it, looking for keyword matches and pattern fits. Two algorithms having a conversation about you, without you in the room. The most human thing in the process is the six seconds a recruiter spends glancing at your LinkedIn photo.

When both sides of the table are automated, credentials become noise. Everyone's resume will be optimized. Everyone's cover letter will hit the right notes.

So where does differentiation happen?

Before the application.

The VP of Engineering role that went to your former colleague? She didn't apply. The CEO asked his network who they knew, and three people mentioned her name. She'd been writing about engineering leadership for two years. Nothing viral. Just consistent, thoughtful posts about problems she'd actually solved. When the CEO searched for her, he found proof she could think.

That's not luck. That's compounding visibility.

The CTO who landed at that Series B startup? He'd been publishing technical retrospectives on his blog. Ugly website. Maybe 200 readers. But when the founder asked for intros to senior technical leaders, two investors forwarded his writing. He was in the conversation before the job description existed.

Your personal brand is about being in the room when someone asks "who do we know that does this?"

The people who win in this next era won't be the most credentialed. They'll be the most findable. The ones who've built a trail of proof that shows how they think, what they've learned, and what problems they know how to solve.

Starting is simpler than you think.

Pick one problem you've solved in the last six months. Write about what actually happened. Not thought leadership. Not advice. Just the story, the mistake, the thing you learned. Something a peer would read and think "I've been there."

Do that once a week for six months. You'll have more public proof of your thinking than 95% of people at your level.

Your resume gets you processed. Your brand gets you chosen.

The algorithms are coming for the application process. They're not coming for your reputation.

Build the thing they can't automate.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've gotten an opportunity because someone already knew your work

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on building a career that doesn't depend on the algorithm

You ship every deadline. Solve every outage. Work weekends debugging production.

Still no promotion. No visibility. No seat at the strategy table.

You assume you're not ready. Not senior enough. Not strategic enough.

Maybe you're not the problem.

A Staff Engineer I know spent four years at a company trying to break into leadership. Delivered everything asked of her. Mentored half the team. Proposed architectural improvements that would have saved months of pain.

Nothing moved.

Her skip-level kept saying "soon." Her ideas kept dying in committee. Her manager kept pulling her back into code because "we need your hands on this."

She thought she wasn't ready.

Then she changed companies.

Within eight months: promoted. Leading a platform team. Architecting systems instead of just building them. Her ideas now shaped the roadmap instead of disappearing into Slack threads.

Same talent. Different soil.

Here's what I've learned watching technical leaders for twenty years:

Some environments starve you. Politics beats impact. One failed experiment ends your credibility. "Hands-on" becomes a cage instead of a strength. Your growth plan is "figure it out."

Some environments feed you. Decisions stick. Failure is data. Leading means strategy, not just execution. Someone actually invests in your development.

The brutal part: it's hard to tell the difference when you're inside it.

You assume the problem is you. That if you just shipped more, worked harder, got better at "playing the game," things would change.

Sometimes they would.

Often they won't.

The company isn't broken. It's just not built for what you need. And no amount of effort changes soil composition.

The engineer I mentioned? She told me later: "I wasted three years thinking I wasn't good enough. I was just planted in the wrong ground."

Your talent stays constant.

Your environment is a choice.

If you've been grinding without growing, ask yourself:

Is it you?

Or is it your soil?

Sometimes the bravest move isn't working harder.

It's walking toward better ground.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've made this move

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on technical leadership that compounds

I have been seeing this take going around lately:

Wake up: 6.7" screen.
Work: 16" screen.
Relax: 55" screen.
Sleep: 6.7" screen.

Congratulations. You've optimized your entire existence into rectangles of varying sizes.

The scariest part is that it feels completely normal.

I spent years thinking dedication to the job was leadership. First one to respond. Last one to log off. Phone on the nightstand because production might sneeze at 3 AM.

Slack before coffee. Email during dinner. Weekend? That's just Monday cosplaying as free time.

I was performing dedication for an audience that wasn't watching.

Here's how it happens:

First it's "just during launches." Then "just for critical systems." Then somehow everything becomes critical. Your kid's soccer game is critical. Your lunch is critical. Your shower is apparently critical because you brought your phone in there "just in case."

Just in case of what? An emergency that only you can solve while shampooing?

We've built elaborate monitoring systems for services nobody uses. We get paged if a database hiccups.

Meanwhile: one hundred and twenty-six Slack checks before noon. Not a single one necessary.

Your phone addiction doesn't have an SLO. Maybe it should.

A Director I know finally checked his screen time. Seven hours and twelve minutes. Daily. On his phone alone.

"That can't be right," he said. "I'm busy. I don't have time to be on my phone that much."

The phone disagreed.

Availability isn't leadership. It's a coping mechanism wearing a tie.

You're not responding fast because your team needs you. You're responding fast because the dopamine hit of "being needed" is easier than sitting with whatever you're avoiding.

Boredom. Uncertainty. The quiet voice asking if you're actually making a difference or just making yourself feel busy.

Your phone is a pacifier. And we're all walking around pretending it's a productivity tool.

I'm not here to lecture you about touching grass. I still check my phone too much. We all do.

But I've started asking a different question:

Am I reaching for this because something needs my attention? Or because I can't handle five seconds of silence?

The answer is uncomfortable about 80% of the time.

Your team doesn't need you available 24/7. They need you present when you're actually there.

Big difference.

Start here: Check your screen time. Just look at the number. Don't judge it. Just see it.

Then ask yourself if that's who you want to be.

Because you've built systems to monitor everything except this.

Maybe it's time.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've checked Slack more than you've checked on yourself this week

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on technical leadership that doesn't require living inside a rectangle

Most tech leaders will finish this year where they started.

Same title. Same scope. Same invisibility.

Not for lack of talent. For lack of intention.

They focus on the work and assume the work speaks for itself.

It doesn't.

But this is good news. The gap between stuck and sought-after isn't ability. It's habit.

Six months of practice. Five changes. A career unrecognizable from today.


1. One conversation a week with someone outside your company.

Not networking. Conversation.

The CTO navigating what you'll face next year. The VP who built what you're attempting. The founder hiring for a role you'd decline but could learn from.

Twenty-six conversations. Your perspective shifts. Your network expands. Opportunity finds you instead of the reverse.

Most leaders are too busy. That's why most leaders are invisible.


2. One piece of writing each week about how you think.

Not polished. Not strategic. Just captured.

The tradeoff you debated Tuesday. The mistake you made in March. The framework behind your last three decisions.

Twenty-six artifacts. A trail of clear thinking that follows you everywhere.

Six months ago, Google didn't know you. Now it does.


3. One "I don't know" spoken aloud each day.

Technical leaders rise on expertise. Then they reach roles where expertise isn't enough.

The practice: catch yourself about to bluff. Stop. Say it.

Feels like weakness at first. Becomes a superpower by month three.

Your team trusts you more because you stopped pretending.


4. One question asked monthly: "What should I stop doing?"

Your calendar is archaeology. Layers of decisions made once, never revisited. Meetings that outlived their purpose. Work you do because you always have.

Ask your team. The first month, silence. By month three, honesty. By month six, hours reclaimed.

Those hours become strategy. The thinking you never have time for.


5. One protected hour weekly for work only you can do.

The roadmap that never gets written. The business case that would unlock funding. The relationship with your CEO that would change everything.

Block it. Protect it like uptime.

Twenty-six hours of strategic work you wouldn't have done otherwise.

Small numbers. Massive compound effect.

Six months is long enough for change. Short enough for focus.

Most people will read this, nod, and stay busy.

The ones who act will wonder why they waited.

Start this week.

♻️ Repost and comment if you're starting today 

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on careers that compound

Founder

Vice President of Information & Technology

Pandora Jewelry

Co-Founder / Chief Technologist

Systems Consultant

You have 30 seconds. Name your top three accomplishments from last year.

Specific deliverables. Measurable impact. No "supported the team" or "contributed to projects."

If you struggled, so will your team.

Amazon just formalized what's coming everywhere: your value is no longer what you're capable of. It's what you can prove you delivered.

Used to be: "When you're at your best, how do you contribute?"

Now it's: "List 3-5 specific accomplishments. What did you deliver?"

One question is about potential. The other is about evidence.

That shift should concern every technical leader.

Here's why:

Your best engineers are often your quietest. They prevent outages, not just fix them. They improve systems gradually, not dramatically. They make everyone around them more productive in ways that don't fit neatly into a bullet point.

Now they're being asked to list accomplishments. And "nothing broke because of me" doesn't fit the template.

This isn't just Amazon.

Musk started demanding weekly accomplishment reports at Twitter in 2022. Zuckerberg declared a "year of intensity" at Meta. Google has toughened reviews. The entire industry is shifting from "what are your strengths?" to "what did you ship?"

The era of being valued for potential is ending.

Now you're valued for evidence.

This creates a problem: the system is about to reward self-promotion and punish quiet excellence. The engineer who documents every win will outperform the one who just wins.

Unless their leader helps them.

Here's what this means for you:

Start documenting your team's impact now. Not at review time. Continuously.

When someone prevents an outage, write it down. When a refactor saves hours of future work, quantify it. When someone mentors a junior engineer who then ships something great, capture it.

Your team won't do this for themselves. The engineers who most need to document impact are usually the ones least comfortable doing it.

That's your job. Not to game the system. To translate invisible work into visible evidence before the system punishes people for being humble.

The Amazon article quotes their new guideline:

"Consider situations where you took risks or innovated, even if it didn't lead to the results you hoped for."

Even they know accomplishments aren't just successes. They're attempts. Experiments. Calculated risks that didn't pan out.

Help your team see that. Help them articulate not just what shipped, but what they learned from what didn't.

The question "what did you get done?" is coming to every company.

Make sure your team has a good answer.

Not because the game changed.

Because you taught them how to play it.

♻️ Repost and comment if your team needs to hear this

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on protecting your engineers from systems that reward noise over signal

"Psychological safety" was printed on the office wall.

Then production went down at 3 AM.

The VP's first question wasn't "What broke?"

It was "Who was on call and why didn't they escalate faster?"

A VP of Engineering I know spent six months writing engineering principles. Posted them on Confluence. Shared them in all-hands. Had a designer make posters.

Blameless culture. Growth mindset. Learning from failure.

Beautiful words. Framed and mounted.

Then someone missed a sprint commitment. Then technical debt broke something customer-facing. Then a senior engineer pushed back on an impossible deadline.

That's when the real culture showed up.

Not the documented one. The actual one.

The one that asks "who" before "what." The one where blameless post-mortems somehow always end with action items for the engineer who deployed. Never for the PM who changed requirements mid-sprint. Never for the executive who demanded the shortcuts.

Your engineering culture doesn't live in your handbook.

It lives in seven moments:

When an engineer raises technical debt. Do they get investment or "we'll revisit next quarter"?

When a post-mortem happens. Are you hunting for the person who failed or the system that allowed it?

When someone questions an estimate. Is that insubordination or the healthy pushback you claim to want?

When your best engineer complains. Are they "difficult" or worth listening to?

When someone asks for refactoring time. Is it waste or maintenance?

When production breaks. Is someone getting blamed or everyone getting smarter?


A CTO told me his culture was "strong" because they had detailed engineering values. I asked what happened last time a deadline was missed.

Long pause.

"We had a tough conversation with the team about accountability."

"What about the sales VP who promised the customer a date without asking engineering?"

Longer pause.

Culture isn't what you document. It's what you enforce when enforcing it costs something.

When protecting an engineer means challenging an executive. When admitting system failure means your process looks bad. When addressing behavior means losing someone who ships fast.

That's when values become real or become decoration.

Your team already knows which one yours are.

They're not reading your Confluence pages.

They're watching what happens after things break.

And they're taking notes.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've seen the gap between culture decks and culture reality

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on building engineering culture that survives contact with failure

Twenty minutes into the interview, he realized she knew more about distributed systems than he'd learned in fifteen years.

His first instinct wasn't excitement. It was panic.

"If I hire her, what's my value?"

A Director of Engineering told me this last month. He'd built his entire career on being the smartest person in the room. That's how he got promoted. That's how he measured worth.

Now he was sitting across from someone who made him feel like a junior engineer.

I asked what he did next.

Long pause. Then a slight grin.

"I hired her before she could finish interviewing anywhere else."

Six months later: his platform handles 10x the load. Incidents dropped by half. Architecture decisions that used to take weeks now take days.

His VP just asked him to take on two more teams.

None of that happens if his ego runs the interview.

Here's what I've learned watching technical leaders for twenty years:

The ones who stall are the ones who need to be the smartest person in the room. Every hire feels like a threat. Every expert on their team feels like competition. They build teams that make them feel secure instead of teams that make them successful.

The ones who scale have killed that instinct.

They know the job changed. The skills that got them promoted aren't the skills that build something bigger. At some point, being the smartest person becomes the bottleneck.

Your company needs capabilities you don't have. Your team needs expertise you can't provide. Your next phase requires hiring someone who makes you uncomfortable.

That discomfort isn't a warning. It's a signal.

When a candidate makes you nervous, that's not a threat to your value.

That's growth trying to happen.

The Director told me later: "I used to hire people I could teach. Now I hire people who teach me. The results aren't even close."

Your technical skills got you promoted.

Your willingness to hire past them determines what you actually build.

The next time someone makes you feel like the dumbest person in the interview, don't panic.

Hire them before someone else does.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've hired someone better than you 

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on building teams that scale past your ceiling

Twelve people in a conference room. Six months into a CRM migration everyone knew was drowning.

$40K a month in burn. Zero business value shipped. And there we sat, discussing "revised timelines" and "adjusted scope."

I've been in this room at three different companies. Same silence every time.

Everyone sees it. Nobody wants to be the one who says stop.

So I stopped trying to say stop.

Instead, I started having smaller conversations. Finance was already frustrated about the budget creep, so I helped them put real numbers on it: $240K spent to solve a problem that generated $30K in complaints the previous year. They didn't need convincing. They needed ammunition.

Sales was losing deals during the transition chaos. I asked what they'd do with the two engineers currently stuck on integrations. Turns out they had a punch list of quick wins collecting dust.

The VP who sponsored the project? I never asked him to admit it was failing. I just walked him through what "pivoting to a phased approach" could look like. Same outcome. His reputation intact.

Three weeks later, he presented the "strategic pivot" to leadership. Got praised for decisive resource allocation.

I sat in the back of that meeting and said nothing.

The project was done. The politics were handled. And $180K got redirected to three smaller bets that actually shipped.

You don't need authority to change direction. You need to make the new direction easier than the old one.

Most of that work happens in hallways, not conference rooms.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've ever sat in that room where everyone knew but nobody spoke

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on leading without the title

You're excellent at saving failing projects.

That's exactly why nobody trusts you to build something new.

A Director I know spent seven years being the person they called when things went sideways.

Backend rewrite stalled? Call him.

Migration falling apart? Call him.

He fixed every single one. Got thanked in all-hands. Built a reputation as the guy who delivers when it matters.

Then a VP role opened. Greenfield AI platform. Strategic. Exactly what he'd been working toward.

They gave it to someone with half his experience. Someone who'd never rescued a single failing project.

"We need you where you are," they told him. "You're too valuable in crisis mode."

Translation: We've trained you to be our firefighter. We're not promoting firefighters to city planning.

When you're the fixer, strategy conversations happen without you. Because strategy people build things. You rescue things.

Your team stops wrestling with hard problems because why struggle for three days when you'll solve it in three hours? And the organization's incentive becomes keeping you exactly where you are.

And he admitted he let them.

He wasn't staying because they needed him. He was staying because being needed felt like being valuable.

The rush of solving what nobody else could. The gratitude. The reputation. It was easier than the uncertainty of building something that might not work.

He eventually left. Joined a startup as VP of Engineering. Built a platform from scratch. Hired his own team. Shaped product strategy from day one.

Same person. Different expectations.

If you're the one everyone calls when things break, ask yourself: when's the last time someone asked you to build something that doesn't exist yet?

Your ceiling isn't your skill. It's what you're known for.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've ever been "too valuable" to promote

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on building a career that creates options, not obligations

"Do you actually want us to ship this? Or are we just building prototypes for your ideas?"

The room went quiet.

A senior engineer had finally said what everyone had been thinking. The VP sat there, mouth open, reaching for words that wouldn't come.

Five strategic initiatives that year. AI integration. Platform modernization. Data warehouse. Customer portal. Mobile redesign.

Five kickoff meetings. Five vision docs. Five "this changes everything" presentations.

Six months later: five projects at 70%. Zero in production.

Every time something hit the messy middle, he'd already spotted the next shiny thing.

"We should really be thinking about..."

"Have you seen what the competitor launched?"

His team learned to treat his enthusiasm like weather. Intense when it arrives. Gone by Thursday.

Starting is easy because starting is fantasy. You imagine perfect outcomes. Sell the vision. Feel like a strategist. The kickoff high is real.

Then reality arrives. Edge cases. Integrations that don't work. Your beautiful architecture meeting ugly constraints.

Finishing means watching your perfect idea become imperfect. Every compromise chips away at the vision. Every bug reveals something you missed.

So you escape. That refactor can wait. This new AI thing is more urgent. The old project isn't abandoned. Just... reprioritized.

You call it strategic. Your team calls it what it is.

The engineer's question broke something open.

That VP went home and sat with it. Why did finishing feel so hard?

He'd been chasing the dopamine of beginnings because completed work scared him. Finished means judged. Finished means finding out if your idea actually works.

Next week, he stopped three initiatives. Put everyone on two.

One shipped in six weeks. Messy. Customers used it anyway. The other shipped in ten. Also imperfect. Also valuable.

First time in two years his team could say "we built that." Not "we're building." Built.

How many initiatives on your roadmap will actually ship this year?

If you love kickoffs but skip standups. Write vision docs but avoid release planning. Seven priorities, no shipping rhythm.

You're not strategic. You're scared of finishing.

Your team already knows.

♻️ Repost and comment if you've built prototypes for someone else's ideas

➕ Follow me (Phillip R. Kennedy) for more on leadership that ships

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