You’re reading The Messy Middle: weekly deep dives on leadership, startups, identity, politics, and how to make high stakes decisions that are intentional and in-line with your values.
⚽ Iran vs. Egypt
It was Friday night and I was so pumped to be watching the Iran vs. Egypt game. The score was 1-1, and Iran was seconds away from making history at the World Cup. The game was already in overtime, and in minute 93, Shoja Khalilzadeh scored a goal against Egypt. The team goes nuts and the crowd is sobbing: happy tears on one end and sad ones on the other. For about four minutes, Iran believes they've made the knockout round for the first time ever.
To the crowd's absolute shock (and to mine on the other side of the TV screen), the ref called a no-goal due to offsides.
My jaw dropped to the floor.
🤔 WTH Is Offsides?
I've spent a lot of time over the last few weeks trying to understand, "what is offsides?" I even played soccer for a few years as a kid and have absolutely no memory of it (is this enforced in kids soccer?!). And, every World Cup, I'm on YouTube watching super technical videos about what it is and how it's called.
Until, this week, a friend of mine explained it super simply: you need offsides because otherwise the offense can crowd the goalie and score super easily.
AHA. It clicked. No crowding the goalie. It's still a very technical term and it's wild that they used to make this call with the human eye (in this World Cup they are checking it with AI replays). But what really opened my eyes: the why behind the technical aspects of the game are just as important as the technical.
No crowding the goalie. That's the why. Everything else, the exact line, the AI replays, the centimeters...these are just the enforcement mechanism for a principle that's actually pretty simple: don't get an unfair advantage by standing somewhere the rules of fair play say you shouldn't be standing.
🚩 Do You Understand 'Offsides' At Work?
It made me wonder, do most of us understand what actually earns us a goal at work, versus what we *think* is a goal, but is being called offsides by the executive team?
Here are the offsides traps I see leaders stuck in when they come through my door:
➡️ Working the hardest: effort is invisible above a certain level. What matters now is whether the right people know what you're solving, not how many hours it took you.
➡️ Focusing on being liked: likability gets you invited to happy hours, it does not get you protected when headcount gets cut.
➡️ Relying on institutional knowledge: knowing how things have always been done isn't currency anymore, it can actually read as a liability when companies are trying to move fast.
➡️ Being loyal: years of service stopped meaning what it used to sometime in the last decade. Unlike in generations of the past, nobody's handing out tenure points.
➡️ Never saying no: being available for everything just means you absorb more work without getting more credit for it.
So the question is, what actually earns us safety and advancement as leaders in the workplace, and why, if the rules we've been taught above are actually just 'offsides'?
✨ In 2026, Here's The Actual Goal Line
In the world of AI, layoffs, and portfolio careers, there is no shortage of technical skills and hard workers. In 2026, the new corporate currency is this:
Knowing how to solve a specific problem, and communicating it up effectively. When budgets get cut and roles get consolidated, the people who survive are the ones leadership can point to and say "they own X." Generalists without a clear value proposition are the easiest to let go. (I've thought a lot about this as a generalist, and have had to really work on positioning what I can uniquely own).
Having relationships outside your immediate team. If your only advocate is your direct manager, your safety is only as stable as their standing. A broader network means your reputation travels without you.
Making leadership feel like things are handled. This isn't about optics, it's about trust. Leaders protect the people who make them feel calm, not the ones who create more work to manage.
Visibility, relationships, communication. That's the winning goal.
🥨 Snacks
💸 Billionaire Cities: Was Silicon Valley just the first of many play cities by billionaires to overthrow democracy?
⚽ How To Build: The national propaganda it took to build a Japanese super team in a country with ZERO soccer culture. And yes, it includes anime.
💡 In Case You Missed It: How warehouse fires across California can teach us about organizational failure and the normalization of deviance.
🎥 Happy 4th: Watch I Love Boosters, the perfect combination of fantasy about the effects of late-stage capitalism.
See you in next week's mess,
Arshiya
