How do I get executives and the board to actually back this?

Your pod has the data. The roadmap is tight. You walk into the room expecting agreement, and instead you get questions, delays, a request to "circle back." You leave thinking the problem is the plan. It is not. The problem is timing. By the time executives and the board see the direction, it is already decided. Agreeing to it costs them something — it means submitting, not deciding. So they do what any person does when handed a finished thing: they look for the crack. You cannot control their politics, their egos, or their appetite for risk. You can control when you bring them in, what you let them change, and whose name ends up on which part of the plan. Start there.

◆ How this problem reads on the two dials

GuidanceKnowledge

More coaching

A little to learn

1:1 with AureliusWith others (a Pod)

Some one-to-one

Practise with peers

The fix is mostly behavioral — what your pod does before and inside the room — so coaching carries more weight than explanation.

How the two dials adapt to you →

What’s really going on

You do not have a selling problem. You have an ownership problem. Stop handing them a finished plan and asking them to clap. Bring them in while the plan can still change. People defend what they helped build. They pick apart what they were only handed.

🔒 What you’ll build togetherUnlock by starting

A moveBefore the big meeting, sit with each executive alone. Ask one real question about the direction — not to inform them, but to let them change something in it.

A moveChoose one part of the plan you can actually give away. Let a specific executive own that piece in public.

A moveIn the room, present the problem before the solution. Let them argue their way to your answer instead of defending it against them.

A moveSay the tradeoffs out loud yourself, before anyone else does. Don't make them the one who has to object.

A moveAfter the meeting, name specific people for specific parts of the direction. Do it publicly, every time.

PractiseWhat Will You Give Away? · a Pod of 4 · 30 min

What changes unlock by starting

Executives start calling the direction "ours," not "yours."
Board meetings become about refining details, not relitigating the whole plan.
Your pod stops dreading alignment meetings, because you're building together, not defending alone.
Decisions move faster, because no one is fighting you for ownership anymore.

One object, two jobs: a public answer to a real problem, and — the moment you start the chat — Aurelius’s live plan for your version of it.