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- Tips to Speak Like a CEO, A Future Unlock for 10x Engineering That Founders Must Know About - Tactician: #0083
Tips to Speak Like a CEO, A Future Unlock for 10x Engineering That Founders Must Know About - Tactician: #0083

"'If you're gonna talk like a CEO, you need to make everything sound like it's the next big thing. 'This isn't just a pen; it's the future of writing.' Even though it's just a pen and you're just writing a grocery list."
22/03/24
Tips to Speak Like a CEO
Why Read:
Enhance your communication skills and ensure your message resonates effectively.
Author:
Nathan Beckord, CEO at Foundersuite.com and Fundingstack.com, interviews Dr. Laura Sicola of Vocal Impact Productions
Link:
Key Concepts and Tactics:
Identify Your Communication Goal:
“Start with the end in mind... What do you want people to think, understand or feel when you’re done?”
“She describes these as three levels of impact: cognitive, behavioral, and emotional. Once you’ve decided which level of impact to aim for, you can reverse engineer your presentation to achieve it.”
“Think of this as putting the destination in your GPS so you can figure out the best route for your presentation to take you on this journey.”
Assess and Adapt Your Communication Style:
“She points out that everyone naturally behaves differently depending on the situation or audience… Laura describes these changes in personality and demeanor as “your prismatic voice.”
“Which color in your prism needs to shine most brightly in a particular context to make sure that your message lands as intended?” she asks. In other words, which qualities do you need your audience to see in you?”
Evaluate Your Current Speaking Skills:
“Once you know how you want your audience to perceive you, you need to assess how well you convey those qualities already.
“Laura insists that all her coaching clients start by watching themselves on video. “The video camera is the great equalizer,” she says. “It will tell you exactly what you did well and exactly what you did horribly.”
Common Issues and a Tip to Avoid Them:
“Common issues include talking too fast, mumbling and “uptalk” (the vocal pattern that sounds like you’re asking a question even when you’re not)… run on sentences”
“Simply remembering to insert the punctuation you would use if you were writing can help you control these issues.”
Final thought:
Ultimately, speaking like a CEO is about both content and delivery. If you can pull both levers to find your persona as a leader, Laura says, “That is the secret sauce. And when you can learn to do that, you can rule the world.”
A Future Unlock for 10x Engineering That Founders Must Know About
Why Read:
Stay ahead in software development by understanding how AI can revolutionize code testing and dramatically enhance engineering productivity.
Author:
Dan Manges, Co-Founder at RWX
Link:
Key Concepts and Tactics:
The Importance of Testing in AI-Enhanced Coding:
"To realize the potential of every engineer you hire, remove the bottlenecks in getting code into production... Generating code that’s semantically correct is easy, especially for AI... But making changes in a complex code base with many decision trees and getting the correct test results in all cases is still critically hard."
The Challenge of Scaling Testing with AI-Driven Code Changes:
"A great engineer may push 10s of changes per day, but AI co-pilots may soon be proposing 10k changes daily and running 10k tests each time... Most engineering teams have test suites that run all of the tests on every code change, even if that code change could have only affected a fraction of the massive test suite."
The Inefficiency of Traditional Testing Methods:
"Testing can’t be overlooked, and shouldn’t be conducted hastily. But the current process has become cumbersome and inefficient, impeding innovation and overall business success... Companies that don’t get this right stand to lose: Those that remove barriers to development such as antiquated, cumbersome testing processes outperform others in the market by four to five times."
The Role of Fast and Reliable Feedback in Engineering Productivity:
"Improving the test-and-build process requires tools that give engineers fast and reliable feedback on the code they’re developing, with insights into how it will line up with the existing code base... The faster and more reliable that feedback is, the faster engineering teams can move, regardless of whether it’s humans or AI writing the code."
The Potential of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) in Testing:
"ChatGPT itself isn’t the solution. But the way it has been built — a large language model trained on specific data — offers a model for improving the build and test process... With an LLM that has been trained specifically on a company’s code base, the AI can serve as copilot, evaluating whether new code will work and identifying which tests might fail and why."
The Vision for a More Productive Future in Software Development:
"We believe that solving this important problem is the key unlock to a drastic acceleration of how software can improve our world... What does a world in which engineers are 10 times more productive than they are today look like? I don’t know exactly, but I’m eager to find out."
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