For Directors, VPs, and CTOs in Technology
If you have to repeat yourself to your team, you don't have a people problem.
You have a clarity problem.
The Leadership README is the 1-page document that ended that pattern for me after 30 years of leading engineering teams. Free. Yours in 45 minutes.
Want to see what a filled-in Leadership README actually looks like? Read mine →
You already know the pattern.
You explain the priority in a meeting. Two weeks later half the team is working on something else.
You tell someone how you want to be brought problems. Next time you get a 4-paragraph Slack message at 11pm with no recommendation.
You wonder why a peer escalated something you would have happily owned, and why your direct report didn't escalate something they should have.
You assume people know how you operate. They don't. They're guessing. And under pressure, they're guessing wrong.
That's not a team problem. It's a missing artifact.
I wrote this for myself first.
I've spent 30+ years in technology. Chief Architect. VP. CTO. Currently SVP of Technology at a growing SaaS company. I've led teams of 5 and teams of 140+.
For a long time I couldn't figure out why I kept saying the same things over and over. Same priorities. Same expectations. Same instructions on how I wanted decisions made and problems brought to me.
The answer wasn't that I needed to communicate "more." I was already communicating constantly.
The answer was that I'd never written it down.
What a Leadership README actually is.
One page. Five sections. Tells the people working with you exactly how you operate so they don't have to guess.
Bezos has been requiring something like this from Amazon leaders for years. Stripe leaders write them. So do leaders at Shopify, GitLab, and a growing list of serious engineering organizations. Most senior tech leaders haven't.
Once it's written, the team stops guessing. Communication friction drops. Decisions move to the right level. The strange repeated frustrations quietly go away.
It's not a personality test. It's not a manifesto. It's an operating manual. Boring, by design.
What's in the template
Five sections. Roughly 45 minutes start to finish if you actually answer the questions instead of fudging them.
1. How I Communicate
Slack vs email. Urgency expectations. Meeting expectations. The defaults that, once written down, end about half of your inbound friction overnight.
2. What I Expect From You
Ownership. Communication norms. Quality bar. The standards you've been holding people to without ever writing them down.
3. Decision Making
What you own. What they own. When to escalate. The single section that ends most of the "why didn't anyone tell me" moments in your week.
4. How To Bring Me Problems
What you need to see. What not to do. How to convert "what should we do?" Slack messages into useful conversations.
5. What Success Looks Like
Outcomes. Behaviors. The picture of what "doing this job well" actually looks like, written down so the team can self-correct without you in the room.
Why most leaders never write one.
Three reasons, in order:
One. They've never seen a good template. So they default to vague culture-deck language that no one can actually use.
Two. They assume their team already knows. The team doesn't. The team is guessing. Some of them have been guessing for years.
Three. Writing it down forces you to take a position. On how you communicate. On what you expect. On how decisions get made. That's uncomfortable, which is exactly why it's valuable.
The template solves the first problem. The second one solves itself the moment you ship the document. The third one is on you.
What you actually get
- The full Leadership README template, laid out section by section
- Prompts under each section so you're not staring at a blank page
- My filled-in answers as a working example
- A short note on how to roll it out to your team without making it weird
Free. No credit card. About 45 minutes from "I should write this" to "I've shared it with my team."
Who I am, briefly.
I'm Cory Berg. I started writing code at 18. I'm still doing it. I've held Chief Architect, VP, and CTO roles at companies large and small, led 140+ engineers, and I'm currently SVP of Technology at a growing SaaS company.
I coach senior tech leaders on the side. Not as a former practitioner who switched careers. As an active executive who is still in the arena.
This template is the same one I use myself. I'm releasing it publicly for the first time. If you fill yours out, I want to hear what worked and what didn't. The next version will be better because of you.
A few common questions.
Is this really free?
Yes. No credit card. No upsell on the way in. I send occasional updates with new resources for tech leaders. Unsubscribe whenever.
I'm not a manager yet. Should I still write one?
Yes. The exercise of articulating how you work, what you expect, and how you make decisions is valuable whether you have direct reports or not. Tech leads, staff engineers, and project leads benefit just as much.
My team is small. Is this overkill?
Smaller teams suffer more from missing artifacts, not less. There's nowhere for the misalignment to hide.
How long does this take to fill out?
About 45 minutes if you answer the questions honestly. Longer if you find yourself realizing you've never actually decided what you expect.
One last thing.
If you don't write your README, your team will keep guessing. That's the cost of not having the artifact. Not your team's fault.
Yours.
45 minutes. Free. Yours below.