Soft-Skill Upgrades for Tech Leaders - Aviv Ben-Yosef

We're rich in calendar events but poor in outcomes. Everyone gets the same 24 hours - CTOs who ship, people running governments, Fortune 100 CEOs. The difference isn't time, it's how you spend it. Track your time for two weeks and compare it to your assumptions about where your hours go. For most leaders, this is like an ice bath. Then reset your calendar like a startup pivoting: strip everything down, add back only what matters, identify your non-negotiables first and let everything else work around them. Run quarterly resets to remove accumulated cruft.

Tech executives who communicate effectively turn into major influences on the company. They shift from order-takers to equal peers in the executive team. You're speaking to humans, not a compiler - start every communication by identifying the action you want to create. Always consider the other person's WIIFM (what's in it for me). Record yourself during all-hands meetings and talks to catch verbal glitches and weak spots. It's painful at first, but it makes you aware of small things that distract or bore others. Before critical conversations, prepare your hot takes and define your wanted outcomes. Don't wing it.

Chronic decision-waffling is one of the biggest issues today. Many leaders think they can wait till the perfect moment when they'll know everything. That moment rarely comes, and when it does, it's usually too late. Spot all the decisions waiting on your desk - they're hiding in Slack conversations you keep unread, your inbox, post-it notes, and worst of all, in your head. Make a meta-decision for each: will it be decided, and when? Use frameworks to move faster - reversible vs. irreversible decisions, or risk framing to assess how problematic something might be. Document your decisions and review them in retros so you build intuition through feedback loops. These aren't just soft skills, they're leverage skills with real compounding effects.