Three days, one context, my judgement on every page

That title (with the word “your” adjusted to “my”) came straight out of what my Chief of Staff just told me.

I’ve had an intense few days working on a major deliverable and iterating.

I just locked it. In a state that I am genuinely proud of.

It honestly reflects months of work coming together into something I can stand behind and advocate for. And I’m going to next week.

My system helped on the fly in ways it was never designed for. Its own assessment: it gave me “scaffolding - voiced components, a structure; the financial reconciliation, a set of catches and a tireless second pair of eyes” - it scored that at 30%.

I brought “the strategy, political judgement, receipts and nerve”. It scored that at 70% and “the 70% that’s the actual paper” at that.

Nothing it handed me went out unedited - I read and audited every word (and adjusted most of them).

And yes, this post is full of quotation marks, but I’m quoting my system, those aren’t my words.

When it had a go at my voice, it said my voice had “teeth” - a point of view, brought unapologetically. It couldn’t do that, I had to bring it. That was the strategy and the nerve and I’d do it all over again each and every time.

My system got me started with material I already had in there. It helped me re-run the numbers and catch a few grammatical errors and typos at the end (and a couple of phrasing choices that I refused to change, because they didn’t *sound* right - I’m going to sound like me, not sanitised).

I did everything that matters. ICM let me get three days out of the system with no compaction and unanticipated use. My whole approach let me put myself where it mattered every time. How are you bringing your judgement in your system?

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