The year I stopped apologising for not being technical

For about a year I opened meetings by getting in front of it. "I should say, I am not a developer myself…"

I thought I was being honest. I was actually asking the room for permission to be there, and people can hear that.

What I was getting wrong

I had decided the valuable skill in this industry was writing code. It is not, or at least it is not the scarce one. There are a great many people who can build what you describe. There are far fewer who can work out what is worth building, get the truth out of a room, and say no to a feature that would waste your money.

That was already my job. I had been doing it for years, in a different chair.

What I say now

I do not hide it — I have developers, and I say so, because pretending otherwise would collapse the first time someone asked a real technical question.

But the framing changed. It went from "I am not technical, sorry" to "my job is to make sure we build the right thing, and I have people who build it properly". Same facts. Completely different meeting.

The thing that actually convinced me

A client told me they had gone with me over a more technical supplier because I was the only one who had asked them why. That was not a compliment about my humility. It was a description of the work.