This is excellent and is amongst the most thoughtful reflections on impact via policy that I’ve read, so thanks for writing it up.
I lead a policy team in the UK Civil Service working on a classic EA cause area and lots of the content here about routes to impact chimes with my experience, though obviously the institutional set-up in the UK is different.
From my experience, the points under the heading: ‘Big impact wins require taking the time to look for non-obvious opportunities’ are incredibly important. There are often super exciting opportunities for impact that sit outside of what your boss directly expects you to be doing and these can be reasonably easy to achieve if you cultivate the discipline of lifting your head above the grind to reflect on available opportunities and also then protecting enough time to pursue them alongside your more standard obligations.
Thanks for organising, always enjoy filling it in each year! Did questions on religious belief/practice get dropped this year? Or perhaps I just autopiloted through them without noticing. Aware that there are lots of pressures to keep the question count low, but to flag as part of EA for Christians we always found it helpful for understanding that side of the EA community.