Episode 03: Alignment Isn't Agreement

Agreement is everybody thinking the same thing. Alignment is going with the best plan available and owning the outcome, good or bad. Jonathan Meek builds most of what he does on that distinction, because ownership is the only thing that decides whether the work survives the day he leaves. It shows up in an unusual place. About six months into a year-long engagement, he usually gets a job offer from the client. He has said no 10 out of 10 times, and he does not take it as a compliment. He takes it as information: if a client is trying to hire the consultant, nobody internal was ever named to take the work over, and the handoff is going to happen in the last 60 days instead of the first 60. Jonathan is a Principal Architect at Hylaine with nearly 20 years in the field. Jayme MacQueen asks him what he does in the first three weeks of an engagement that makes a client start treating him like a leader, how he gets a client to own a solution instead of agreeing to one, and what has to be true on day one for that solution to outlast him. Also in this episode: the mentor who told him he talks long enough to talk people out of his own ideas, and why he thinks AI is an amplifier rather than a replacement. Episode Highlights: 00:00 Introduction to Off-The-Deck 01:04 Storytelling as the Leadership Skill 02:54 The 30,000-Foot View 04:14 When the Client Starts Treating You as a Leader 06:17 Culture or Experience 11:52 Artificial Intelligence 16:25 The Handoff 24:55 Closing Notes