Behind the Firewall: Notes of a Punk CIO

The Shadow Climber: Always present, never accountable. Moves up quietly in the shade of others’ work.

We all know one. The executive who always shows up in success photos — but never in the post-mortem. They don’t do the work. They align. They share insights. They (only) talk to important people. A lot.

🧬 The DNA of the Messenger of the Board™:

• Master of survival: Delivers nothing for years, yet always lands a bigger title.
• Photosynthesis pro: Grows stronger the closer they are to the CEO spotlight 😀 😀 :D.
• Blame teflon: Nothing ever sticks to them. They were “not the decision maker” or “only facilitating.” Failure always had “unclear ownership” or “misaligned incentives.”
• Talks like a podcast: Every sentence starts with “I had a great conversation with…” or “I was recently aligning with…”
• Buzzword wizard: If there’s a new trend, they already “championed” it months ago — verbally, of course.
• Ass-kissing superpower: Will compliment everybody above them “visionary leadership” before they even speak.

🧠 Their favorite tools:

• Unverifiable data from unnamed “studies” or recent calls with VERY important people or blur decade long experience in every profession from the Yellow Pages;
• Vague slides with lots of arrows;
• Safe phrases like “Let’s explore that” or “We need to stay strategic”.

🔥 Signature move:

The reverse delegation

They “own” things in front of the board, then quietly forward the work downstream like it’s freakin’ radioactive or what 😀 😀 :D.