#47 | Sunday reads for EMs

My favourite reads of the week to make your Sunday a little more inspiring.

May 31, 2026

👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. Every Sunday I share with you my favourite reads of the week.

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How can I lead a critical project when senior leaders are in conflict? (Andi Roberts)

tl;dr: When senior leaders disagree, the real problem is usually unclear governance rather than difficult personalities. Instead of acting as a mediator, leaders should create clear decision rights, formal escalation paths, and visible accountability. Stop absorbing dysfunction and make organisational risks impossible to ignore.

Get to the Core of the Thing (Shreyas Doshi)

tl;dr: Many strategic discussions get stuck debating abstract choices like “go wide or go deep” instead of focusing on what customers actually need. The real question is always: what specific feature or capability will make customers buy and stay? Great decisions come from customer insight, not clever frameworks.

The Ask (Michael Lopp)

tl;dr: In senior leadership, every meeting exists because someone wants something - even if it’s not obvious at first. Great leaders learn to identify the hidden “ask” behind conversations and understand why they were invited. Much of leadership is recognizing patterns, building relationships early, and trusting experience-driven intuition to uncover what really matters.

Using AI to write better code more slowly (Nolan Lawson)

tl;dr: AI is most valuable when it’s used as a reviewer, not just a code generator. The author uses multiple AI models to find bugs, validate issues, and challenge assumptions, often improving code quality rather than increasing speed. Use AI to help you understand code more deeply, not just produce more of it.

EQ is not just about what you say. It’s your body language too. (Wes Kao)

tl;dr: People communicate through body language as much as through words, often without realizing it. Understanding your unconscious “tells”, controlling your signals, and staying physically calm can improve trust, executive presence, and psychological safety. Strong communication is about aligning your body language with your intent.

The last six months in LLMs in five minutes (Simon Willison)

tl;dr: The biggest AI shift over the last six months wasn’t new models - it was coding agents becoming genuinely useful for everyday software development. At the same time, smaller open-source models improved dramatically, making powerful AI available on consumer hardware. AI coding tools have crossed a threshold from interesting experiments to practical daily tools.