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Practice Exercises

This module is practice-driven. There is no LeetCode equivalent for leadership. These exercises turn the concept pages into written artifacts and rehearsed moves. Track reps, not reading hours.

How To Use This Page​

  1. Finish the concept page for the target cluster first.
  2. Use the matching practice page as the structured exercise.
  3. Use this page as the external exercise lane - rep counts, public material to critique, drills against real artifacts.
  4. Keep a mistake journal with tags such as wish-list strategy, identity-language feedback, silent dissent, audience mismatch, no negative consequences, sponsorship = mentorship.

Lane 1: Strategy and Roadmaps​

Use this lane when your strategy documents drift into wish lists or your roadmaps overpromise capacity.

Structured practice: Strategy Memo Lab.

External exercises:

  • Rewrite a public strategy. Find a public engineering blog post that calls itself a "strategy." Evaluate it against Rumelt's kernel. What is the diagnosis? What does the guiding policy rule out? Are the actions coherent?
  • Audit your team's roadmap. Take the current Now/Next/Later list (or Jira roadmap) and run the capacity math. If Now exceeds real capacity, name the items that must move.
  • Kill a project. Identify one project in your team's backlog or Later that should be killed. Write the 1-paragraph justification tying it to the current strategy's guiding policy.
  • Strategy rewrite drill. Take one "strategy document" you have seen in the last year. Rewrite the diagnosis. Observe how different the actions should be.

Target outcomes:

  • 2 full Rumelt-structured strategy memos (one from work, one from a hypothetical)
  • 1 rewritten public strategy with annotated gaps
  • 1 capacity-honest Now/Next/Later roadmap
  • 1 kill-the-project memo

Lane 2: Written-First Culture and Stakeholders​

Use this lane when your proposals stall or when decisions keep getting remade.

Structured practice: Design Review Workshop, Stakeholder Influence Clinic.

External exercises:

  • Critique a public RFC. Pick any RFC from a public repo (Rust, Kubernetes, Python PEPs). Score context / proposal / alternatives / consequences / decision. What does it do well? What is missing?
  • Stakeholder map on a real decision. For one current cross-team decision, produce the RACI + power/interest map. Walk it with at least two real stakeholders this week.
  • Rewrite a Slack thread as a design doc. Find a recent technical argument in Slack that is still live. Write the 1-page design doc that should have preempted the thread.
  • Public ADR critique. Pick one ADR from the Joel Parker Henderson ADR corpus. Identify at least one missing consequence; rewrite the Consequences section.

Target outcomes:

  • 2 critiqued RFCs with annotated strengths and gaps
  • 1 stakeholder map walked in reality (not only written)
  • 1 rewritten-Slack-thread design doc
  • 1 critiqued ADR with a rewritten Consequences section

Lane 3: Communication - Exec, Peer, Junior, Customer​

Use this lane when your audiences bounce off your documents.

Structured practice: Leadership Katas (Katas 1, 4).

External exercises:

  • Four-audience rewrite. Take one technical decision and write four artifacts: exec summary, peer review, onboarding note, customer-impact note. Ask one representative reader per audience what they are missing.
  • Exec summary critique. Pick any public post-mortem (many are linked from the Awesome Postmortems repo). Rewrite the first three sentences as a BLUF exec summary. Compare.
  • 3-minute architectural story. Record yourself telling the story of a system on video or audio. Play back. Identify the weakest slot of the six-part arc. Rerecord.
  • Translate a design doc into a VP 1-pager. Take an existing 8+ page design doc and produce the 1-page version. Show both to a peer; ask which they could act on.

Target outcomes:

  • 1 full four-audience rewrite
  • 2 rewritten post-mortem openings (BLUF form)
  • 3 recorded architectural stories, one per system
  • 1 design-doc-to-1-pager translation

Lane 4: Feedback, Mentorship, Personal Strategy​

Use this lane when your growth moves are all mentorship (no sponsorship), or when feedback conversations keep going sideways.

Structured practice: Leadership Katas (Kata 2), and the drills in Concepts 13-15.

External exercises:

  • SBI rewrite drill. Pick three pieces of vague feedback you have heard (in reviews, retros, 1:1s). Rewrite each in S-B-I form. If you cannot name a specific situation or observable behavior, you did not have enough data to give the original feedback.
  • Sponsorship list audit. Make two lists: mentees and sponsorees. If the sponsorees list is empty or identical to mentees, schedule one sponsorship move this quarter. Write the opportunity and the engineer's name.
  • Personal strategy draft. Write the 1-page personal strategy (career anchor, 18-month goal, sustainable-pace rules, visibility plan, review triggers). Share one section with a trusted peer.
  • Feedback reception drill. Ask your manager or a peer for one piece of hard feedback this month. Practice the receiving move: listen, thank, clarify, separate, act. Write down what you learned about your own defensive patterns.

Target outcomes:

  • 3 SBI-form rewrites of vague feedback
  • 1 sponsorship move executed (named opportunity, named engineer)
  • 1 written personal strategy shared with at least one peer
  • 1 feedback-reception drill done in real life

Self-Curated Problem Set​

Build a custom set with these minimums:

  • 1 Rumelt-structured strategy memo (real problem)
  • 1 engineering strategy document with scope, anti-scope, tradeoffs
  • 1 now/next/later roadmap with explicit capacity math
  • 1 design doc that received at least 5 written comments
  • 1 stakeholder map walked for a real decision
  • 1 disagree-and-commit memo for a real decision
  • 1 exec summary written BLUF-first
  • 3 SBI feedback deliveries (at least one given to someone more senior than you)
  • 1 sponsorship move executed
  • 1 personal strategy page, shared

Completion Checklist​

  • Completed Strategy Memo Lab
  • Completed Design Review Workshop (both reviewer and reviewee passes)
  • Completed Stakeholder Influence Clinic end-to-end
  • Completed all four Leadership Katas
  • Produced at least 2 strategy memos, one for a real problem
  • Executed at least 1 real sponsorship move
  • Delivered SBI feedback in real life at least 3 times
  • Wrote and shared personal strategy page
  • Mistake journal has ≥10 tagged entries