“I want to retire as Deputy Director of ...

“I want to retire as Deputy Director of ...

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“I want to retire as Deputy Director of the transport office,” a friend used to joke when we first entered the workforce. There was no such position. He imagined that the managers below him would handle driver schedules, pay claims and the daily operational work, while the Director dealt with senior management and everything that went wrong. Deputy Director sounded like the Goldilocks position: senior enough to be comfortable, but junior enough for somebody else to carry the real burden.

We were completely wrong.

The higher people rise, the less control they seem to have over three things: their time, the fights affecting their teams and the way their own work is understood.

First, their time no longer belongs to them. When I became a manager, I often opened my inbox at 6pm and began the work I had intended to do that morning. My boss would go home to see her children, return to her email at 9pm and sometimes continue until 1am. Everyone wanted 30 minutes with her. If you knew her assistant well, you might get the lunch slot. Another senior leader I knew booked meetings with himself because that was the only way he could protect an hour to think.

Second, their teams feel safe because they absorb the fights. A friend who had recently entered the corporate world once told us, “I thought I would be thrown under the bus, but everyone has been very nice.” Another friend, who was already a V.P, replied, “Your bosses have shielded you well. It is not that there is no throwing under the bus. It just happens at our level.”

Employees may never see two sales teams arguing over the same customer. The global team says it built the relationship. The country team says it understood the customer and closed the deal.

Both may be telling the truth, but the answer can still affect whose targets are met, which team receives more headcount and who controls the next opportunity. Somebody has to enter that room and make the case for the team.

Finally, senior leaders are expected to be visible online to attract clients, partners, talent and collaborations. Yet many dislike the way this is usually described. “I'm not going to become a LinkedIn influencer,” one senior leader told me.

I understood exactly what he meant. He pictured manufactured vulnerability, motivational posts, and cringy claims. Yet you can build up a LinkedIn presence tastefully.

Each post simply needs to do three jobs.

1. Give people something unexpected (Eyeballs)

One ghostwriter told me that he spends 80 per cent of his writing time on the opening. There is little value in polishing the ninth paragraph if nobody reaches it.

Jacqueline Poh: use an unexpected doorway

Jacqueline Poh does this through food.

As the chief executive of J.T.C, you would think that her posts would be a bore since she could write only about industrial policy, infrastructure and technology. Instead, she created a series about food hidden inside Singapore's industrial estates.

In one post under her #IndustrialEats series, she described fried porridge and bak kut teh inside an industrial building in Tampines North. She then widened the story, pointing out that some of Singapore's most distinctive food is found not in malls or hotels, but inside industrial estates, feeding workers and giving each estate its own character.

Using food, she attracted a following of 90k+ followers, whom she then explains the government plans' for these industrial estates.

Piyush Gupta: challenge something people take for granted

Piyush Gupta uses a more intellectual opening:

“Singapore's rise as a global financial centre was never preordained.”

Everyone knows that Singapore became a financial centre. Far fewer people stop to ask why it succeeded despite lacking a large domestic economy or the natural scale enjoyed by older financial capitals.

The sentence creates a small gap between what readers think they know and what they now want explained. It makes readers stop to read his post. That is what a good opening does.

Before publishing, ask:

Is there a surprising fact, contradiction or detail?

Is there an assumption worth challenging?

2. Give people something useful (Expertise)

Stopping the reader is not enough. Without a useful observation, an interesting story is merely cheap entertainment.

Ian Bremmer: follow the consequence past the headline

Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer often adds value by taking a news event one step beyond the obvious.

When he wrote about the danger of attacking ee-rahn's energy infrastructure, his point was not simply that ee-rahn might retaliate. He argued that ee-rahn could strike energy and other critical infrastructure across the Gulf, while the United States might not be able to defend all of it.

The risk would therefore not remain where the original attack began. It could move into neighbouring countries and affect infrastructure on which the wider economy depends.

He does not merely repeat the news. He tells readers where the danger may emerge next.

Piyush Gupta: explain what has become more valuable

Writing about education in the age of A.I, Piyush Gupta argued that if technology can increasingly supply answers, education must place more value on judgment, curiosity and moral courage.

The insight is not simply that A.I will change schools. It is that the purpose of education has to shift. When answers become easier and cheaper to obtain, deciding which questions matter and which answers to trust becomes more valuable.

A strong executive post does not need to unveil a grand theory every week. It needs one thought that helps the reader see the issue differently.

Before publishing, ask:

Do I know something that is not widely understood?

Can I give readers a comparison that puts the issue in perspective?

Can I provide a simple frame that connects several scattered developments?

What consequence are people failing to follow through?

What part of the problem looks different from inside the industry?

If the post could have been written by anyone who read the same article, it probably does not contain enough of your judgment yet.

3. Let the product sell itself (Evangelise)

Senior leaders also need to show what they and their teams can do. The difficulty is doing this without sounding biased or sales-y.

When Jacqueline Poh wrote about a construction robot tested by J.T.C, a contractor and a start-up, she did not simply announce that J.T.C supported innovation. She explained that the robot went through repeated failures before it worked. When it finally did, it improved productivity by 30 per cent and produced a better finish.

She then described what J.T.C was doing next: creating more places to test large construction machines and changing its procurement process so that successful pilots could be adopted elsewhere without restarting from zero.

The post gives credit to the contractor and start-up. At the same time, it proves that J.T.C can test an idea, tolerate early failure and change its own processes when something works.

Satya Nadella: demonstrate the product through real work

Microsoft C.E.O Satya Nadella does not simply announce that Microsoft has powerful tools.

In one post, he described using Microsoft technology to turn a public Morgan Stanley report into a working application with historical information, scenarios and “what-if” functions.

He then addressed the concern a serious company would have. The code remained inside Microsoft's enterprise environment. The data stayed within the company's systems. Security, governance and cost controls still surrounded the work.

The visible achievement was that the application could be built quickly. The more important proof was that it could be built in a way a large company might actually trust.

He did not need to say that Microsoft understood enterprise customers. The example demonstrated it.

What this actually takes

Senior leaders already have the substance. The hard part is recognising which thought is worth preserving and putting it into words without turning the leader into a generic LinkedIn personality.

I have put together a short set of materials for senior leaders who want to build a useful LinkedIn presence without becoming influencers. Leave a note here if you would like a copy, or if you need a recommendation for someone who can help put your thoughts in order.

About me

For 13 years I wrote intelligence briefings for senior officials who had a dozen other things on the desk that morning. I had about 90 seconds to hold their attention before they decided whether to keep reading or move to the next brief, so I learnt to make that time count.

You are doing the same thing in daily life, whether you are a C.E.O trying to sway an institutional buyer, a partner seeking warm leads, or a leader rallying your troops through an organisational transformation.

I write about how to do that. If you want my reading pack, or a recommendation for a someone who can help you, leave your details here.

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