Thanks Charbel, and the edit resolves most of my attribution worry. It seems that my com was not clear so I’ll try to be clearer. My disagreement is that invisible work has no correction loop (no criticism, no visible failure, no reputational cost) so nothing fixes quality when it lack and you mentioned only 3-4 people matter in the executive, so low-quality intervention by an org can burn that channel for everyone invisibly (and potentially uncorrected). Your bazooka argument is really an argument for taking insider quality very seriously and the post assume it (at least that’s my perception of what you said)
On the the incentives of being a sycophant, the trusted-advisor posture pushes not to be the one who disturbs by bringing new things on the table. And then the insider brake instead of accelerate.
So for me, I don’t argue for less insider work, but a different kind: honest, transparent, object-level like you explain why you think X, and the reasoning Y behind it. I think this raises awareness on the merits, without a political game and done this way it neither burns the channel nor brakes, because the trust rests on being right and legible and not on offering political cover.
Raising situational awareness is probably one of the most effective ways to make progress. It’s important to lay out object-level arguments clearly, and to support them as much as possible both theoretically and empirically.
Trying to make moves that ostensibly address A while the actual threat model in mind is B is epistemically bad, and from my experience, not even more effective in practice. It does take a bit of courage, but in practice the idea that people won’t take you seriously is mostly false, it’s largely a mental barrier. If you’ve genuinely understood the problem at the object level, and you make a real effort to transmit that understanding trying to maximize information transfer and helping others form the right intuitions, then it doesn’t come across as weird at all (even the contrary). Be honest, serious, and rigorous, don’t play a political game, people do understand.