Conveying Competency

Technical leaders often feel a hidden tension with CEOs who crave visible progress and certainty. The core insight is that trust comes from making engineering work transparent and speaking the language of business, not from raw velocity metrics. When a CEO says they don't feel a sense of urgency, they're really asking if they can rely on you to deliver value on time and understand the risks.

The article argues that you must translate updates into customer impact, cost trade-offs, and risk management rather than story points or micro-service migrations. By framing progress in terms executives care about, you appear competent and reduce the need for micromanagement. It also recommends pausing when a CEO probes a detail, uncovering the underlying fear-missed deadlines or lack of visibility-and adjusting communication to pre-empt those concerns.

Anecdotes dominate a CEO's perception, so proactively share positive data points, small wins, and steady progress before they hear about fires. Breaking work into bite-sized, visible milestones and sending brief, regular updates eliminates radio silence and keeps the narrative under your control. The result is a shift from tension to empowerment, where the CEO trusts the tech leadership to steer the ship without constant hand-holding.

Overall, conveying competency isn't about speeding up delivery; it's about making progress visible, translating it into business terms, and consistently reinforcing that you have the wheel firmly in your hands. This approach turns uncertainty into confidence and aligns the tech organization with executive expectations.