Are you asking the right questions?

Something goes wrong at work, and within the hour you've replayed it four times. Why did I miss it. What's wrong with my process. How did I let this happen.

That instinct is rigour. It's most of the reason you're good at what you do. The question is which direction you've pointed it.

I watched a newly promoted PM run a meeting once. He spent it hunting small errors in an analyst's model. An assumption in the third tab. A footnote in the channel checks. He found each one and named it. He regarded it as high standards. Rather, it was insecurity looking for a foothold.

He didn't yet know where the real questions in his sector lived, so he showed authority in the only place he could reach. Finding a small mistake proves you're paying attention. It doesn't require you to know what matters.

A seasoned PM I worked with ran the same kind of meeting differently. He started from the assumption that the analyst knew the sector better than he did. He didn't look for what was wrong. He looked for what was uncertain.

Both were managing the same feeling. The energy was identical; the direction was not.

Some high performers don't grill other people the way the newly promoted PM did. They're too aware of how it looks. They turn the interrogation somewhere it can't be seen instead. "What’s wrong with me" loops. The questions narrow, the effort multiplies, and nothing gets clearer.

"What am I not seeing" points the same energy outward, at the problem rather than the person.

I got a mega cap recommendation wrong once and the pressure felt unrelenting. My response was to work harder: more calls, more iterations, the same lens applied with more force. The harder thing was to ask for help, and ego held me back far longer than the problem warranted. I finally asked when I realised my ratings were already visible to everyone who cared to look. The cost I'd been protecting against was already paid.

Asking for help was never the analytical problem. It was an ego problem.

The difference isn't how hard you work. It's whether the work makes the situation clearer, or just lets you feel you're doing something.

This week's ROE Letter is about those two questions, and why one builds while the other burns.

https://substack.com/@charmianlong

When you analyse your own performance, which question are you actually asking?