Lena’s Leadership Letters: No Bugs To Give
This article was originally sent to my newsletter subscribers on March 25, 2026. There have been a few requests to share this newsletter on my website, so I am uploading it here for everyone to access. Without further ado!
March 25, 2026 | Lena’s Leadership Letters
Dear Reader,
It's been a little while I wrote anything to you here. Berlin, my home, is finally coming out of what felt like an extra-long winter, and everything is looking alive again. (Including me.)
Hello again, it's nice that you're still around.
I'm sharing some notes below about what I'm hearing is bugging tech people & leaders right now. I would love to hear from you: What's bugging you? And how do you cope? It's this little anonymous form (with a cute kitten!), and you can just scream into the form or, as an optional add-on, allow me to share with others your bugs and how you cope. I'd love to hear from you.
On my mind lately
Everyone I hear/read/listen to in tech these days is tired and close to burnt out, or already there. And everyone talks about intense, to the point of absurd, levels of rush, to generate (literally, of course) output: Engineers are hunkered down, churning out tickets like there's no tomorrow, because, if we're being honest, who knows. The context-switching is reaching light-speed, the multitasking is at a speed that would likely qualify you for the best circuses in the world; the work hours are exploding, and the chorus of "more!, more!, more!" is swelling to deafening levels.
The things that we've always known to be important for great leadership, great teams, and, dare I say it, great results, are becoming harder to find and substantially harder to create than ever: Strategy. Perspective. Focus. Clarity. Change leadership, not dictatorship. Alignment. Culture. Critical Thinking. Learning. And, of course, our old friend Outcomes, not to be confused with their imposter twin Outputs. The longer view is being swallowed by the daily hustle.
And while we could in the past sometimes see them all riding off into the sunset, with some hope left that we might, eventually, find them again, now, time and space to think have disappeared behind the horizon line, chased off by a Mad Max style cohort of desert vehicles with drivers screaming "here's this giant org-level change proposal I just generated (and obviously never reviewed); make it happen" and bulldozed over by "if I, the CEO, can vibe-code this in two hours, why do we need this many engineers??"
It leads to leaders across levels feeling reactive, permanently in the defensive, and boxed into a corner where they just keep getting stuff thrown at them, with, sure, superficially, a choice to make about what to take on vs. what to let go, but then, what choice is that really if it's, again, the same topics that have always ended up on the chopping block, meaning, the stuff that just never quite seems to make it into the top right "important and urgent" quadrant of the Eisenhower Matrix:
Tending to the people, and making work work well, instead of just doing anything, really fast, no matter the cost.
These days, I spend much of my waking time thinking about this state of our industry, the world, and trying to put words to both the things that many of us are feeling as we're going through it, as well as formulating an answer, hope, idea, to the question I hear (and have!) so often these days:
"Now what?"
This is what I’m funneling it all into: I'm working on a keynote titled "We Were Meant To Be" for KotlinConf Munich in May, tracing the premise and promises of technology and our industry, how we arrived where we find ourselves now, and where to go from here.
I've always known this would happen since I agreed to it, and I always enjoy when it does: It's become a deeply immersive, creative project (and you can follow it in my work + resources log if you like), one that feels a bit like pineapple in that I consume it, but also, it does very much also consume me. (And as you can probably tell from the metaphors being all over the place in this newsletter, it is doing things to my brain.)
So far, I read around 30 books for it, and have about 40 more on the list; given that I'll deliver it in less than two months, I probably won't read them all. ("Probably.") And then there are the podcasts, articles, Reddit and LinkedIn posts-slash-essays, Bluesky threads. I have three wooden boards I normally use for drawing that I repurposed to brainstorming boards, a huge obsidian folder, screenshots, audio recordings, and my best stationery to draw from and draw on. The opportunity to really throw myself so fully at an immersive, longer-term creative quest like this, doesn’t come very often, especially one about a topic that’s already so woven into many threads of my life, past and current. This keynote project is only a symptom of something I hear many of you are feeling too:
It's pretty impossible not to get sucked in. I feel such a strong pull to take it all in, an impulse that I attribute to my brain's cravings of dopamine, news, but, even more so, a desire to make sense of it all. I also know that, right now, no one really has the answers that I'm actually craving, and, as many people are out there LARPing certainty, confidence, and excitement (LARP = live-action roleplay), I don't think anyone will actually have these answers anytime soon.
So, as tempting as it is to go all-in, all the time, I try to limit how much I engage with it all Instead, I have been trying to shift my attention: In my work with clients, it’s often about a mix of self-management tools they can use to not lose their minds, combined with hard drives for focus, clarity, and boundaries against slop. In my other work and managing where my ADHD brain goes, it’s been about pointing it towards poetry, literature, and other art forms that are in the business of sense-making and uncertainty-handling. I want to emphasize that it’s not always easy to do those things, because the rush machine is loud and powerful, and it’s also tiring. But I make a conscious effort where I can, to listen to music, go to concerts, bake (scroll to "things I loved" for some links), plan more creative projects, sit in the spring sun. I picked up painting again: Last night, I finished a set of very weird, highly congratulatory cards that I painted for friends who recently went through big life changes. I post some of those things on my Bluesky if you're interested in following along; and, as it’s been a long email: I’d love to hear from you what’s bugging you and how you cope). Right now that, the deeper I go trying to make sense of the nonsensical, the more I just want to bang my head against a wall. Filling the walls with beautiful things whenever I can makes it all more bearable.
As I am writing this, I hear a "plop" sound above me. Looking past my screens, I see a ladybug landed on my window, its silhouette dark against the bright blue sky, the sun shining through its wings. I get up, want to take a photo, move cautiously because I don't want to scare it, try and scooch between my desk and the window, holding up my phone at different angles, zooming in and out, but I can't get it to focus. The ladybug starts moving again, bugging all the way across the windowpane to the corner, then all the way over to the left along the edge, tiny bug is upside down, and then to the front of the window, out of my view. I plop down at my desk again.
Wishing you a ladybug moment this month,
As always,
Lena
New articles & podcast episodes
Facilitation Is A Superpower, And Resources To Help You Get Better At It. Learning it has changed me, so read this if you’re interested in new ways of thinking or just very practical tools.
The Making of: a Keynote on Tech, Humanity, Crisis, And The Future. I like watching a mess unfold. This is for you if you feel the same way. And don’t forget your seatbelt, it’s a ride.
Talking about talking, I recently launched public speaking coaching & mentoring to help you speak with conviction and move your audience (and help you navigate the process of gettiing there).
The AI adoption is a hot mess. Here's some help: What AI Can (and Can't) Do for Your Engineering Team (Beyond the Hype). In this co-authored piece with software architect & strategist Teal Bauer, we examine the current state: where these tools genuinely help, what humans still do better, and why many engineers are experiencing an identity crisis.
At the intersection of music and leadership: A while ago, I was able to watch someone lead in a very public way who made me really curious about how he does it: Cornelius Meister, a German conductor, pianist, and previously General Musical Director at Stuttgart State Opera. More: Conducting As Leadership, With Cornelius Meister
More articles on critical leadership skills
What I loved
Leaving you some threads here to pick up if you wish: I recently saw
Music: Niklas Paschburg
Music: Deutsches Symphonie Orchester with a phenomenal Abel Selaocoe (here at a Tiny Desk Concert) playing the cello and singing a new composition by Jessie Montgomery
Movie: Lesbian Space Princess
I’ve been making, gifting, and eatingmany Peanut Butter Miso Cookies (gift link); like some commenters suggest, I like to switch the peanut butter and miso amounts, reduce the sugar to 60%, and let the dough cool for up to three days so the flavors really melt together. These are really good. There are also vegan versions online if you want to test those.
And talking about food:
The plum you’re going to eat next summer
doesn’t exist yet; its potential
lives inside a tree you’ll never see
in an orchard you’ll never see, will be touched
by a certain number of water droplets
before it reaches you
Upcoming event
Online | April 14 | O’Reilly’s Tech Leadership Tuesday:Performance Management in the Age of AI, with Ananth Ramachandran and Lena Reinhard
Munich, Germany | May 22 | KotlinConf: Talk: We Were Meant To Be
London, UK | June 2-3 | LDX3: Workshops; Meetup for members of underrepresented groups at Director+ levels
Maybe I’ll see you there!
