R. Leigh Hennig
Mar 4, 2026 - Nov 9, 2026
4
Decisions
0
Active Todos
10
Patterns
Categories
Decisions (4)
RESF and OpenELA asks are real work - the answer is yes, it goes to your manager and into Jira at high priority, and refusals escalate to Peter
At the Reno onsite Peter told the whole Linux org that when Lee or Jonathan Dieter asks for help with the RESF the answer is yes: tell your manager, get it into Jira, treat it as real work and prioritize it super high. On 11/5 Arthur Tyde described OpenELA as unsupported and himself burning out; Peter applied the same rule to Arthur asks and gave him an escalation path - if anyone says they are too busy, bring it to Peter and make it his problem. Peter committed to talk to Lee about OpenELA from his own perspective, to keep dialing into OpenELA calls, and asked Sarah for an ongoing biweekly meeting with Dieter.
Committed CIQ Engineering Resources to Unblock RESF
Committed CIQ engineering resources (specifically Max Spevack) to unblock RESF, positioning RESF health as critical to CIQ success. Committed to asking Nathan to prioritize providing new AWS contacts for Leigh to bypass stalled Duncan access. Directed Chris to lock down internal-rasf Slack channel for Leigh's weekly write-ups. Clarified Max's role as Chief Architect for Everything Linux focused on upstream health and AI-automated CVE remediation. Agreed Brian's value is limited to admin tasks — Leigh will communicate this assessment to Greg.
Sensitive Decision
Sensitive Decision
Related Patterns (10)
Executive Sponsorship for Strategic Partnerships
Strategic cross-company initiatives and major client partnerships require executive-level accountability to move at the right pace and ensure proper prioritization.
Protect Engineering Capacity
When external demands threaten to overload engineering capacity, protect capacity by either requiring the demand to come with additional resources, or forcing hard prioritization choices upstream.
Lead by Example with New Tools
When championing new tools or processes, personally use them and share results rather than just advocating. Learning by doing and demonstrating value through example is more effective than mandates.
Small Circle for Sensitive Operations
When executing sensitive strategic operations, keep the circle of informed people as small as possible to prevent leaks that could accelerate hostile action or undermine the initiative.
Protect Engineering Focus Through Process
When faced with requests that would disrupt engineering focus (from sales, governance, product, or other stakeholders), establish processes that protect engineering ability to innovate while still satisfying legitimate concerns. Prefer systematic solutions over ad-hoc responses.
Purpose Is the Decision Procedure
When someone asks how a process, board, tool or artifact should handle their specific case, Peter refuses to answer on the askers terms. He re-derives the answer from what the artifact is for, states that purpose as the only decision procedure, and lets the answer fall out. Anything found to be serving a second purpose is deleted rather than debated. Tools and views are explicitly subordinate to definitions. He will accept that the askers real problem is simply not solved by this artifact rather than widen the artifact to cover it.
Demonstrate the Standard, Then Collect It
When a new leadership expectation has to land across multiple orgs, Peter does not write a spec. He runs a live exemplar in public with the strongest performer first, says openly that the ordering was deliberate, keeps the form of the deliverable open so the ask stays about the thinking rather than the artifact, lets the delta be self-evident to the people who will have to close it, and then collects the same from everyone else on a named rotation. He prefers showing imperfect work now over polished work later.
Switch Instrument, Not Intensity
Applies when a message, rule or ask has already failed through the channel Peter is currently using - repeated advocacy that has not landed, coaching that produced defensiveness rather than improvement, exhortation that did not change behaviour, or a rule that keeps losing case by case. His response is never to restate the same thing more forcefully. He changes the instrument and usually names the switch out loud. Mined from 7 independent observations between 2026-01-06 and 2026-08-21.
Time Over Cost
Peter treats elapsed time as the scarce quantity and money as the abundant one, and will spend cash to buy schedule, clarity or optionality. Notable because he named it himself as a transferable principle on 2026-05-21 and coached the lens explicitly to a direct report, which is rare - most of his patterns are inferred rather than stated. It generalises past procurement: he will pay to convert an ambiguous dispute into a binary one, remove cost as a variable entirely when a priority has executive visibility, and reason about a commitment in terms of lead time rather than budget. Mined from 5 independent observations between 2026-02-01 and 2026-09-11.
Measure, Commit Publicly, Then Execute
A three-beat escalation arc Peter runs when he needs a commitment from a peer or the CEO that private pressure has not produced. Beat one: measure the thing and get a number. Beat two: state the commitment in a venue where the people who matter are watching. Beat three: execute against it. The 2026-04-15 observation names the sequence explicitly and notes he does not skip steps, because each beat builds the legitimacy of the next. The venue choice is treated as a decision in its own right, separate from what the message says. Mined from 8 independent observations between 2025-12-29 and 2026-08-28. NOTE: scope this to the venue-and-sequence mechanism specifically - forcing function is a phrase that appears loosely across many unrelated decisions and should not be taken as a match on its own.