Week 6 Stand-up: Credit

"We shipped" and "I shipped" are rated differently. This week you learn who gets credited for a team's work, and why it is usually whoever wrote the email.

1 April 2027

This week's trickBe the person who writes the launch email.

Who paysWhoever the reader already expected to be the supporting act.

The last stand-up before the break. Week 5 was about being seen at all; this week is about being seen as the owner of something a whole team did.

Bring#

A group project you were part of but did not lead. Names of everyone on it.

The trick#

Own the narrative artefact. For any project, the launch announcement is the single document most senior people will read, and its author is assumed to be the project’s owner. Volunteer to write it. Use “we” throughout; the author line does the rest.

What happens#

You write the launch email for the project you brought. Two paragraphs, sent to a fictional executive. Then you swap with someone and mark every place the email assigns credit, explicitly or by implication. You then rewrite the email so credit lands where the work was done, and notice how much longer and less convincing it gets. Last, you say who on the real project the first version quietly demoted, and whether the room would have guessed that name before reading the email. Usually it would have.

How you know it worked#

You can read any announcement and say who it makes the owner, and you have felt how little it takes to make that person you. Assessment 1, the self-review, is due on Friday.