David Ether Atlas of Inner Work LLC 30 N Gould St, STE R 82801 Sheridan WY
#MEMOS
Brief notes from complex situations
When Winning Stops Feeling Like Success There comes a moment when the scoreboard keeps going up and something in you stops caring. You still do the work. You still hit the numbers. You still perform on demand in every room that matters. From the outside, it looks like... Read more
Quiet Panic Behind Impressive Numbers No one looking at your numbers, would guess how often you wake up at 3 a.m. with your heart racing. On paper, everything looks solid. Growth is there. Margins are acceptable. Cash is defensible. The board deck is clean. The market likes the story. You know exactly which slide proves everything is under control. The panic does not live in the slides. It lives in... Read more
The Day Your Role Outgrows You You step into a room you have led for years and feel slightly out of place. No one notices. They still see the title, the track record, the authority. You feel a small gap. A delay between who you are now and the role you are still... Read more
What You Cannot Delegate To Anyone You have built a life on the ability to delegate. You know how to move work off your plate with a sentence. Whole teams exist because you decided a topic was no longer the best use of your time. There are very few things left that only you can do.... Read more
The Cost Of Being The Safe Pair Of Hands At a certain point in your career, your name stops being just a name. It becomes a safety mechanism. A project wobbles, a deal goes sideways, a division starts to drift. Someone says: "We need a steady pair of hands on this." Everyone knows who that means. You accept. You adjust your calendar, move your life around, carry the weight. From the outside, it looks like trust. You are the one they rely on when it actually.... Read more
The Question You Hope No One Will Ask You You spend your life being questioned. Analysts. Board members. Journalists. Senior hires. You are used to being pressed on numbers, risk, headcount, roadmap. You can explain almost anything you do. You even enjoy it. You know how to hold a room, how to defend a decision, how to project certainty when the data is thin. There is only one kind of question that unsettles you..... Read more