Welcome to the Room

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Title: Welcome to the Room Authors: Jeffrey Snover Category:articles Tags:leadership,Startups Number of Highlights: 7 Source URL: https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/02/01/welcome-to-the-room/ Date: 2026-02-07 Last Highlighted: 2026-02-07

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Highlights

Welcome to the room!
Congratulations …. your days of whining are over​.
In this room, we deliver success, we don’t whine.​
Look, I’m not confused, I know you walk through fields of shit every day. 
Your job is to find the rose petals.
Don’t come whining that you don’t have the resources you need.​
We’ve done our homework.  
We’ve evaluated the portfolio, considered the opportunities and allocated our available resources to those opportunities.
That is what you have to work with. 
Your job is to manufacture success with the resources you’ve been allocated.
And yes – you have a hard job.
You only have 2 controls:​ 1) The clarity, culture, and energy you give your teams​; and  2) Resource allocation​.
And I want to be clear with you.
If you are in this room, you need to deliver outsized success.  
To do that, you will need to allocate resources ahead of conventional wisdom​.  
Conventional wisdom will generate conventional success and that won’t allow you to stay in this room.  
You need to have courage and be bold.
And when you do that, you may fail.
BUT.  
If you fail, I will back you if, and only if, you are “intellectually honest”.
Intellectually honest means:  
1) ​You always have a plausible theory of success​.
2) You allocate your resources in accordance to that theory 
3) You monitor your theory​ 
4) When you find it is no longer plausible, you make changes to get a new plausible theory of success.
If you are doing these things, I will back  you even if you have a failure.
….
 As long as you don’t make it a habit.

Note: Satya congratulating new executives.

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So strip away the happy talk and corporate-speak.

Note: Good exec’s must be 2 sides of a coin: the happy corporate speak for the external party, and the master craftsman who can apply ultra precise changes grounded in reality. If they fail at either, they are a liability.

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If you are an exec and don’t have the resources to support your strategy, you have the wrong strategy

Note: Strategies must be grounded in the current reality.

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“What signals will tell us whether our theory is plausible or not and how long will it be before we get those signals?”

Note: “Fail fast”

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“Do the dots actually connect?”

Note: A pre-mortem. When you’re ass is on the line, no one cares that another team dropped the ball.

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In the “Room,” you are judged by the outsized success you deliver, not by how busy you or your teams appear to be.

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Your job is to provide the clarity, culture, and energy that allows a team to move.

Note: This is the vision to get the org to believe in. And it requires it to be grounded in reality.

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