We trade Halloween jokes for hard truths about performance reviews: how to log wins, avoid surprise ratings, and argue your case without burning bridges. We compare startup urgency with big-corp safety nets and offer scripts for giving and receiving feedback that actually helps.

• logging accomplishments at release and milestone moments
• mapping outcomes to goals and competencies
• building role-specific ladders for clear growth paths
• aligning marketing and product impact to revenue metrics
• avoiding surprise reviews with timely, specific feedback
• turning reviews into two-way conversations
• using scripts to challenge or clarify feedback
• managing up and protecting team perception
• cautionary tale: bizarre corporate AI training and real AI limits

Join the Discord via our Linktree, play What Do You Meme, and buy us a coffee to support the show

Click/Tap HERE for everything Corporate Strategy

Elevator Music by Julian Avila
Promoted by MrSnooze

Don't forget ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ it helps!

We call out why meetings feel endless and show practical ways to make them shorter, clearer and tied to outcomes. Startup chaos meets enterprise structure as we share tactics for agendas, cadence, and guarding your calendar without burning bridges.

• naming the meeting problem and calendar overload
• one‑on‑ones versus team syncs and scaling with layers
• startup reactivity versus enterprise planning horizons
• shifting from task lists to outcome‑based management
• demanding agendas and clear objectives for invites
• using 15‑ and 25‑minute blocks and off‑hour starts
• on‑demand time with pre‑reads and owner accountability
• blocking focus time and quarterly pruning of recurrings
• recognizing structural interdependencies that fuel meeting load

Join the Discord, buy a baby onesie from our spreadshop, you can give us money because we pay to put this show out there and you can support us and we'd love you for it. Share this pod with your friends, family, neighbors, and everyone you know.

Click/Tap HERE for everything Corporate Strategy

Elevator Music by Julian Avila
Promoted by MrSnooze

Don't forget ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ it helps!

We weigh the trade-offs between startup speed and enterprise stability, and why separation of concerns across product, marketing, sales, security, and legal protects focus and trust. The throughline: reduce dependencies, design clear interfaces, and learn the reason behind every gate before you try to remove it.

• small pains revealing big structural truths
• big corp frameworks vs real-world dependencies
• startup ownership, bottlenecks and executive approvals
• redundancy vs single points of failure
• why vertical slices exist as checks and balances
• limits of embedded pods and cognitive load
• aligning structure to software and outcomes
• clean interfaces between product, marketing and sales
• career strategy by season: breadth vs depth
• diagnose before change, then tune approvals to risk

Join our Discord: link in the show notes
Like, subscribe, share, and rate the podcast
We are starting to release episodes only to the Discord community

Click/Tap HERE for everything Corporate Strategy

Elevator Music by Julian Avila
Promoted by MrSnooze

Don't forget ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ it helps!