Thanks for going to bat for us

11:42pm: associate calls to say he’s created some air cover. Deck can go out tomorrow morning. Says he had to spend some political capital but he believes in protecting his analysts.

My pages were done at 8:10. The VP had already called me about the missing pages at 10:30. They were the associate’s.

I know he hadn’t started because at 11:50 he asked if we had anything he could leverage as a starting point.

Sent him an example.

He asked if I could put it in our template.

Did that.

Asked if I could populate the numbers so he could stay at the right altitude and pressure-test the narrative. Sure. Stay up there. I’ll make the fucking slide.

The narrative arrived at 1:20. A title and 3 bullets. One said essentially the same thing as the title. He asked me to take a first pass at making it less repetitive.

Next day he asked if I’d had a chance to catch my breath. Said part of his job was absorbing pressure from above so I could focus on execution.

Then he asked me to mention the extension in his upward feedback. Suggested the phrase “advocates for junior resources.” Said otherwise senior people don’t see all the work he does behind the scenes.

Behind the scenes? You were on screen share asking me how to indent a fucking bullet. I built your pages, wrote your commentary and missed dinner so you could send a delayed message that said “Thanks, all” at 3:34.